We are pleased to announce that the Calliope 2020 issue, the Upper School’s English-language literary art magazine, garnered the highest of praises from the Columbia Scholastic Press Association (CSPA) in two distinct categories.

First, Calliope 2020 earned “Gold Medalist” status in the Critique phase of judging, scoring 970 out of 1,000 points. Typically, Calliope reaches Gold status (800 points or above) in the Critique. However, this mark of 970 is the highest Critique score Calliope has received in several decades, if not its entire history as a D-E publication. The Critique is a long list of scored standards in three categories––Magazine Essentials, Verbal, and Visual. This issue earned the highest status possible, called “All-Columbian Honors,” in all three categories for the first time ever!

Apart from the success in the Critique, three individual pieces from Calliope 2020 received national recognition from the CSPA in the form of the Gold Circle Awards. Our Calliope 2020 editors were ecstatic to announce the winners to the community. The Gold Circle winners, all members of the Class of 2020, were:

• 2nd place, Single Artistic Photograph: “Vertebrae,” by Luca Fontaine ’20
• 3rd place, Alternative Story Form: “Words in the Face of Death,” by Wiley June ’20
• Certificate of Merit, Single Illustration, Hand-Drawn: “Grand Aspiration,” by Jiho Chun ’20
• Congratulations to all the contributors,Calliope club members, and editors for this historic feat with Calliope 2020. We celebrate our 2019-2020 editors: Emily Char ’20, Sloan Charles ’20, Serin Koh ’21, and Riley Levine ’20 for their incredible efforts producing this groundbreaking issue of Calliope. It’s an achievement all the more remarkable as much of the work on the issue was done over Zoom and Google Drive due to the beginning of the pandemic.

Copies of the print magazine are available by request; an online version is available to the D-E community as well via the student activities page.