Seniors receive Blacker Prizes for writing excellence

Winston Hill, Kylie Gilchrist, and Mazin Abdelghany received the eighteenth annual Lillian F. Blacker Prizes for Excellence in Writing on Wednesday, May 21, in a ceremony in the Belmont High School library.

The Blacker Prizes, awarded by the BHS English Department, are presented each year to three BHS seniors for their outstanding senior theses. Members of the high school English Department select the winners who receive scholarship money as prizes for their outstanding work. Dr. Michael Harvey, Principal of BHS, presided at the event with the assistance of Denis Fitzpatrick, Director of English. Alyssa Levine, daughter of Lillian F. Blacker, and Dr. Peter Holland, Superintendent of Schools, presented prizes and certificates to the three outstanding student writers

At the awards ceremony, the winners read from their papers and discussed the evolution of their ideas. Winston Hill read from his first prize paper, “‘All Great Truths Begin as Blasphemies’: George Bernard Shaw and the Independent Search for Truth.”Kylie Gilchrist discussed her second prize paper, “Irreconcilable Opposites: V.S. Naipaul’s Divided World.” Third place winner Mazin Abdelghany discussed his paper entitled, “The Separated Soul: Opposites Leading to Delusion in Kurt Vonnegut.”

In addition to the presentations by the competition winners, a panel of seniors discussed their topics and the senior thesis process. Aby Bartalini, Ben Gareca, and Liz O’Brien told parents and students about their process, their discoveries, and their insights into their authors.

Family and friends established these writing awards in memory of Lillian F. Blacker, a longtime Belmont resident who was very active in community affairs and was director of the Harvard Medical News Office. As part of the ceremony, Estelle Raiffa, Belmont resident and family friend, and Foster Wright, former BHS principal, gave brief reminiscences of Lillian F. Blacker.

Each senior at Belmont High Schools reads, researches, and writes a lengthy thesis paper investigating a literary topic. The thesis is a graduation requirement at the school.