PCS Students Take Top Prizes at Dickens Day of Writing
May 12, 2025 | by Ildi Carlisle-Cummins
PCS seniors Ronan Mai, Nastasha Kondrat and Dina Lusztig Noyes all garnered recognition for their outstanding work:
Ronan Mai, “Romantic Fire: The Interplay of ‘Gone Astray’ and Romanticism Throughout Dickens’s Life”
Dina Lusztig Noyes, “‘Gone Astray’: Charles Dickens and the Battle for Trans Joy”
Nastasha Kondrat, “Dickens’s Distancing: Charles Dickens's Relationship with His Younger Self”
This year, 124 students from 8 high schools nationwide, from Santa Cruz to Cleveland to Atlanta, participated in the annual Dickens Day of Writing. Along with PCS, students from Aptos High School, Harbor High, Santa Clara High School, and St. Francis participated locally at the Santa Cruz event. Students read a piece written by Charles Dickens, “Gone Astray,” and had three hours to compose and revise an essay response.
Twenty-five PCS seniors participated in the Dickens Day of Writing this year and all their essays will be published in a forthcoming anthology of student essays on “Gone Astray,” published by the Dickens Project! Seniors who are taking AP Literature at PCS have been participating in the Dickens Day of Writing every year for the past four years and have won top awards each year in the competition, which is judged by professors in the literature department at U.C. Santa Cruz.
Copies of the anthology will be available in the PCS front office at the end of May.