What Can You Do?

1. If you are an alum of The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, tell us your story! We want to hear about what the challenges have been along the way.

2. Help us find alums!
You can be an ambassador for the Alliance to your friends and associates and help us expand our search. We have eight decades of alums to find!

3. Make a donation to support the Creative Industry Committee. The Alliance and the more than 250,000 teenagers we serve annually will be inspired by your generosity. Donate Now!


The alums of the past are the keys to our future.

The Gold Key Society of the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers
Are you eligible?


The early recognition of some of our country’s most influential artists and writers through The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards validated their talents and helped set the courses of their creative futures.

(famous alumni quotes)


“Life is a tragedy full of joy.”
-Bernard Malamud, Alum ’32, Writer

“Art can educate. Art is the vehicle by which our imaginations can flourish and inspire. It is essential.”
—Robert Redford, Alum ’54, Actor, Director, Producer

“It's not only children who grow. Parents do too. As much as we watch to see what our children do with their lives, they are watching us to see what we do with ours. I can't tell my children to reach for the sun. All I can do is reach for it, myself.”
—Joyce Maynard, Alum ’71, Writer

“I'd asked around 10 or 15 people for suggestions. Finally one lady friend asked the right question, 'Well, what do you love most?' That's how I started painting money."
—Andy Warhol, Alum, Artist

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”
—Sylvia Plath, Alum ’47, Writer

“If you are a writer you locate yourself behind a wall of silence and no matter what you are doing, driving a car or walking or doing housework you can still be writing, because you have that space.”
—Joyce Carol Oates, Alum ’56, Writer

“Sometimes I think all my pictures are just pictures of me. My concern is... the human predicament; only what I consider the human predicament may simply be my own.”
—Richard Avedon, Alum ’41, Photographer

“I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.”
—Robert McCloskey, Alum ’32, Writer

“Being an artist separates you from things in general. One’s mind is working at a faster, more sensitive, more rapid, eye-batting level than most people’s. Most people, let’s say, have 10 perceptions per minute, whereas an artist has about 60 or 70 perceptions per minute.”
—Truman Capote, Alum ’36, Writer