South Dakota Students Announced as Regional Winners of the 2026 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards
Presented by the nonprofit organization the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards are the country's longest-running and most prestigious scholarship and recognition program for creative students in grades 7–12. Forty-one creative teens from South Dakota received regional honors and nominations in the categories of Gold Keys, Silver Keys, Honorable Mentions and American Voices.
In celebration of this year’s regional award winners, a reception and ceremony will be held on Sunday, March 8, at 1 p.m. in Farber Hall on USD’s main campus in Vermillion, South Dakota.
Since the program’s founding in 1923, the awards have fostered the creativity and talent of millions of students and include a distinguished list of alumni such as Tschabalala Self, Stephen King, Kay WalkingStick, Amanda Gorman, Charles White, Joyce Carol Oates and Andy Warhol, all of whom received recognition in the Awards when they were teens.
For Gold Key works of art and writing in the awards’ 28 categories—including architecture, painting, flash fiction, poetry, printmaking, science fiction and fantasy and more—the opportunities for recognition will continue when the works are considered for national honors. This includes a wealth of additional opportunities, such as scholarships and inclusion in the National Exhibition and Scholastic Awards Traveling Exhibition, the annual anthology of award-winning teen writing and the annual catalogue of award-winning teen art. Poets who win national awards are considered for the National Student Poets Program, the nation’s highest honor for young poets presenting original work.
National awards will be announced on March 25, 2026.
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