As a child, senior Cosette Gonzales was introduced to the writing world when her father read The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien “in all these funny accents.” Other times her parents read poetry to her. When she was six, she finished the whole Lord of the Rings trilogy by herself. Since then, Cosette has grown to appreciate the art of writing.

“This was all probably influenced by the fact that I’m an only child; I had to be creative in order to entertain myself, and so I basically started using my imagination and making things up, which I guess has been translated onto page now.”

On March 6, 2010, at the annual San Diego Writing Project at UCSD, Cosette was honored with two Scholastic Art and Writing Awards as well as the California Writing Award.

She first sent her works to UC Berkeley for judging at the regional level. Cosette submitted a memoir and a short story, both of which were recognized for their excellence.

This year, California received 2,051 submissions from 891 students and 298 schools in the state. Out of all the entries, 160 submissions were selected for awards by a panel of California writing teachers and professors, published writers, and literary professionals.

Cosette’s short story about a girl who plays the violin and her strained relationship with her violin-teacher and father won the Gold Key Award, which means that her story was one of the top winners in the regional competition. It will be judged at the national level in New York. Gonzales was one of 12 awardees from San Diego, and the only one to win the Gold Key Award.

Cosette first got involved in the competition when she noticed a poster on a wall in Mrs. Christy Bailleul’s room her freshman year. Due to a busy schedule, she did not have the time to work on her pieces until this year, but she was already inspired to enter the competition.

“I remember I would go online to Scholastic Art & Writing’s website and read the excerpts. The writing was so amazing and made me want to experiment with different styles.”

This past summer, Cosette attended the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio at the University of Iowa where she met writers from many other nations. She also worked as a teaching assistant at UCSD’s Young Writer’s Workshop where she “hung out with fifth graders, taught them about writing, and bought an excessive amount of frozen yogurt from the on-campus Yogurtland.”

In addition to being both a student and teacher in the creative writing world, she has submitted other publications to the CCHS literary magazine El Sol since freshman year. She has been published in Creative Communications national Poetry Anthology 2008 and Magee Park Poets’ Anthology 2009.

One day Cosette dreams of writing a novel or working as a writer at a video game company that focuses on storyline and characters. For now, she enjoys writing in her spare time.

She said, “I write poetry every so often, although it is pretty challenging. I have a love-hate relationship with poetry. My absolute favorite, though, is fiction. I write a lot of short stories. I like exploring characters and stories and putting into tangible form the ideas that course through my head.”