The winner of this year’s Scott-McKenna scholarship is Sarah Kinney of Shelburne, New Hampshire, a journalism major at Simmons College in Boston.
Sarah has been interning at the Berlin Daily Sun, a New Hampshire newspaper, often covering outdoor subjects, and this fall she will be editor-in-chief of the Simmons College campus newspaper. She has also been accepted as an intern for Outdoors, the member magazine of the Appalachian Trail Club. After graduation next January she hopes to work for a medium-sized newspaper or magazine in New England.
Sarah tells us:
“As for my professional goals, I have always wanted to be a storyteller. Stories are one of humanity’s oldest traditions and one that transcends so many cultures. It is important to document the human experience and our interactions with each other and the world. I believe it is my purpose to tell those stories in an engaging and objective way.”
Scholarship chairman Mike Hammond said he received close to 150 applications for the scholarship – from Alaska to New Zealand and Oregon to the United Kingdom – and Sarah received the $2,000 award because her application “ranks at the top of all the submissions that I have received over all the years that I have been in charge of the scholarship.”
“Sarah Kinney earned the award not only through her outstanding application, but through the way she conveyed to me her desire to do something with the talent she has worked so hard to improve and perfect over the years,” Hammond said.
In a letter thanking RMOWP for the award, Sarah told Hammond that she has been working summer jobs since she was 14 to earn money for college, but she also has to rely on scholarships such as the one from RMOWP to cover the costs. She added, “I know so many have invested in me, and I hope to do well by them.”