Leaders in the fields of art and literature were asked to judge works on the national level of the 2017 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. From authors to video game designers, journalists to museum directors, jurors across all creative fields lent their time and expertise to help choose the 2,700 National Medalists. We’d like to take a look back at the jurying process and send out a huge thank you to all of our jurors!
National Writing Jurors
To judge the thousands of writing entries, we have a two-step process. Educators and other professionals score the works for Round 1 judging. The top-scoring works move onto Round 2 where dozens of literary professionals, book and magazine editors, novelists, poets, professors, and critics help select the works that will receive National Medals. This two-step jurying process involves weeks of reading and scoring by our judges.
Notable writing jurors include Mahogany Browne, Edwidge Danticat, Thom Duffy, Ann Messner, Sergio Troncoso, and John Corey Whaley.
National Art Jurors
In February of 2017, luminaries in the arts came to the Scholastic Inc. offices to judge video games, paintings, films, drawings, and more for the 2017 Scholastic Awards. Works were divided into panels by category and each panel was judged by three jurors. Our biggest panel, for photography, was split into multiple days of judging.
Notable art jurors include Willie Cole, Leela Corman, Philip Lorca di Corcia, Dread Scott, and Hrag Vartanian.
For more insight into the artwork submitted in 2017, we asked a few art jurors to discuss some of the themes they noticed during judging.