FFRPL Home | RPL Home | MCLS Home
ffrpl logo

Congratulations, 2025 Sokol winners!

Awards Ceremony and Reception

Thursday, April 24, 4pm-5:30pm

Kate Gleason Auditorium at Central Library, 115 South Avenue

 

View the 2025 Sokol Program

Poetry

1st prize: Miriam Parham, Church Girl Pantoum

Miriam is a senior Creative Writing major at School of the Arts. Outside of writing poetry, she enjoys journaling, crocheting, and going out to eat with her friends.

2nd prize: Thehara Ubayawardena, Social Norms Pop Quiz

Thehara is a senior from Pittsford-Mendon High School. They are an editor for Scribere Literary Journal and an intern at BreakBread Literacy Project. Besides writing, Thehara loves cats, psychology, and Sherlock Holmes.

3rd prize: Frankie Reiss, The American Abecedarian

Frankie is a 9th grade creative writing major at School of the Arts. Outside of school Frankie enjoys playing softball, volleyball, and the drums in a band with her sisters.

Prose

1st prize: Hailee Grove, Lumen

Hailee is a creative writing major at SOTA. Aside from writing, she enjoys biking and photography. She also enjoys collecting teddy bears, lamps, rocks, and other knick-knacks.

2nd prize: Kayla Smith, Low Tides

Kayla attends Spencerport High School. In addition to writing, Kayla enjoys singing, musical theater, and drawing. At school, she is a part of Vocal Jazz and Treble Choir.

3rd prize: Jasmine Wu, Mr. Patched Bear

Currently a freshman at Pittsford Sutherland High School, Jasmine loves to write stories, enjoys reading fictional books, and listens to music. She plays piano outside of school, is part of the varsity tennis team, and loves trying out new snacks!

About the Sokol Awards

Since 1958, the Friends & Foundation of the Rochester Public Library has sponsored a creative writing contest for Monroe County high school students. Entries from public, private, charter schools and Home Schools are welcomed.

In 1985, Eli & Mildred Sokol established an endowment through the Community Foundation, which makes it possible for FFRPL to award monetary prizes to the winners, and honoraria to the judges. The Sokols’ foresight and generosity ensures that FFRPL will be able to maintain this legacy program for young writers in perpetuity.

Cash Prizes

$1,500 in cash prizes are awarded: $300 for first prize (Prose and Poetry); $200 for second prize (Prose and Poetry); $100 for third prize (Prose and Poetry); and one $300 prize for Performance. If a group wins the performance prize, the prize is equally divided by the number of people in the group.

Sokol programs (including student entries and judges’ commentary)

View the 2025 Sokol Program

View the 2024 Sokol Program.

View the 2023 Sokol Program.

View the 2022 Sokol Program.

Sokol Award Winners posted to SUNY Brockport’s Open Access Repository

Thanks to our partners at The College at Brockport, the complete collection of Sokol award winning entries from 2015 can be viewed and downloaded.

Cumulatively, winning entries have been viewed 2,387 times, from 63 countries!