W2W Scholarship Winners

As part of WILMA’s Women to Watch Awards, WILMA provides scholarships to four local students every year to support their efforts in writing.

The winners were announced at the awards event in September.

Four students — two from the University of North Carolina Wilmington and two from Cape Fear Community College — receive $500. They’re nominated and selected by the officials with their school and writing programs.

Here are this year’s scholarship winners and their writing goals.

MEGAN SERNA

Serna is a creative writing and English major at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. She has worked all throughout college. She was a writing consultant at UNCW’s Learning Center for three years and now is a manager and a hostess on the days she does not have classes. Her professional goals are to become a novelist and find her way into the publishing industry as an editor. She writes fiction and creative nonfiction and is currently working on a draft of novel-length. When she’s not with Bella, her French bulldog, she’s either at the ocean or with her best friends. She dreams of living abroad, walking in and around the world she’s laid out on paper.

ISSY THOMPSON

Thompson is an aspiring author from a small town in New Hampshire. She is a senior undergraduate student at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, majoring in creative writing, pursuing a certificate in publishing, and minoring in English. Her work – both fiction and nonfiction – often features feminist themes and reflects her lived experiences as a woman in America from a big, small-town family. She is deeply interested in the personal narrative in fiction and how interpersonal relationships are reflected and function within art. When she isn’t writing, she can be found enjoying various other creative pursuits such as crocheting, painting, baking, and of course – reading.

JULIA STARLING

Born and raised in Wilmington, Starling has always had a passion for creative writing. She is currently enrolled at Cape Fear Community College. For her professional goals, she would like to become either a fiction editor or a professional author. She writes primarily fantasy. When not in class or working part time at the Mediterranean restaurant CAVA, where she has been for two years, Starling likes to buy an obscene amount of books. She likes to draw, write, and spend time with her cat, Howard, and chickens.

OLIVIA MAGEE

Magee is a Cape Fear Community College student currently working towards her associate’s degree in teacher preparation and plans on moving onto a university in order to continue to get her bachelor’s degree in elementary education. During her semesters at CFCC, one of Magee’s pieces has been accepted into the community college’s literary magazine Portals. Her passions include nature and horror, which are common themes within her writing. She has done special effects makeup for local haunted houses and friends’ short films. When Magee isn’t working on one of her horror stories, she spends time playing video games with friends, taking care of her plants and telling her cats Plato and Freya to “not knock that over.”

To view more of photographer Madeline Gray’s work, go to madelinegrayphoto.com.

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