2018 Winners of the Brodsky Prize

Monericka Semeran has been writing for The Little Green newspaper at Central since her freshman year, serving as co-editor-in-chief this school year, concentrating on editorials and commentary.

“The Little Green has taught me that opinions have teeth, that facts are meant to be unalterable, and that nothing is as important to development of the self as the development of the Voice,” Semeran wrote in an essay accompanying her Brodsky Prize entry. “Through working for the paper, I have developed principles, learned what it truly means to give your all to something, and I have been lucky enough to witness the fruits of my labor every month when we publish an issue.” She will use her award to support Central’s student newspaper and to help with her college expenses as she attends Vassar College in the fall to study International Relations and write for the college newspaper. Semeran’s entry consisted of three opinion columns in which she denounced author Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury, one of the first books about the Trump administration’s White House; took on the controversy over NFL players kneeling during the National Anthem; and decried “normalizing” neo-Nazism.

She is donating $1000 of her award to The Little Green, enough to finance two issues in the next school year. Brodsky Prize judges felt Semeran’s work showed she confidently presented strong opinions, backed by research, on a variety of relevant, timely and important issues facing all of us.ay News president and publisher, and Susan Geier, executive director of the Nackey S. Loeb School of Communications.

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