A couple of America’s next best-selling writers might be right here in Northwest Montana.

Rebecca Vance, a seventh-grader at Kalispell Middle School, and Makayla Cichosz-King, a senior at Libby High School, earned high honors at the national level by winning silver medals for their short-story submissions to the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards competition sponsored by the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers. 

The competition is open to students in grades 7 through 12. Winners’ work is considered for exhibition or publication. This year there were about 230,000 art and writing submissions.

Both Vance and Cichosz-King are raising money to attend a May 31 ceremony at Carnegie Hall in New York City.

The prestigious contest dates back 90 years. Past winners include notable authors such as Sylvia Plath, Truman Capote and Joyce Carol Oates, according to the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards website.

In order to move on to the national level, Vance and Cichosz-King first won Gold Key awards at the regional level. Between 7 to 10 percent of entries at this level receive Gold Keys. Also at the regional level, Cichosz-King earned a Silver Key for her writing portfolio.

For 13-year-old Vance, getting this far and going up against older students was quite an achievement, considering this is her first foray in creative writing outside a class assignment.

When language arts teacher Camille Deitz read one of Vance’s poems from a class assignment she zeroed in on her student’s talent.

“What she wrote just blew me out of the water — just the depth and her natural ability,” Deitz said.

Deitz began searching for a competition Vance could enter.

“I wanted to test my writing and find out if others found it interesting,” Vance said.

The award-winning short story that followed, “The 38th,” is told from the perspective of a Korean War soldier fighting on the front line when North Korea invaded South Korea by crossing the 38th Parallel, a line dividing the countries.

“It was a total surprise when the North Koreans attacked,” Vance said. “He’s dealing with the grief and the shock that comes with it.”

Vance said writing from a male soldier’s point of view was not the most challenging part because she wrote about universal emotions.

“I imagined the imminent fright. Fright is something all of us experience,” Vance said. “For me, structuring each sentence to make it interesting and using figurative language to set the scene was challenging.”

While she cannot pinpoint what piqued her interest in Korean history, she does remember part of it stemmed from a video she saw online about North Korean concentration camps. 

Fascinated with Korean history and culture, she also began reading books about the two countries during silent reading time in class.

A second story about a boy confronting his inner demons is in the works.

Vance’s characters take shape throughout the writing process.

“I might have an idea of who I want them to be and through that they develop who they want to be,” Vance said.

Her advice to aspiring writers: “Get yourself out there. If you have a passion go ahead and try it. I didn’t expect this. I was surprised to find I had a talent.”

Cichosz-King’s short story, “Winter-sealed,” was also a first-time Scholastic entry for the 18-year-old who plans to major in English and minor in creative writing at the University of Montana. 

She also won a 2013 National YoungArts Foundation merit award for her writing. 

“It’s all I ever really liked to do,” Cichosz-King said. 

“Winter-sealed” unfolds around a boy who kills himself. Writing about such a heavy topic proved to be cathartic for the young writer, who was going through her own personal struggles.

“Paper children are disposable,” Cichosz-King said about her fictional characters. This ability to devise her own characters is why she plans to stick with fiction.

Dialogue is one of writing’s challenges, but creating characters is one of her favorite parts and her strength is working poetic language into narrative, she said.

Achieving such a high honor recognizing her ability was self-affirming. 

“I’m still suffering with some self-doubt,” Cichosz-King said.

In the future she sees herself working as an editor in a publishing house and cultivating her creative writing on the side.

Cichosz-King became interested in reading and writing at a young age when she read J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter,” series.

High school teachers involved in her education include English teachers Jon England and Todd Schatz and art teacher Patty Rambo.

Currently she is working on two novels. One is a companion to “Winter-sealed.”

Her advice to writers is to keep at it.

“Even if no one else likes your writing it’s important that you do, and don’t stop,” Cichosz-King said.

Both students are seeking donations to make the trip to New York. Contact Camille Deitz at Kalispell Middle School by calling 751-3800 or Patty Rambo at Libby Middle/High School at 293-8802.