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Local teen keeps writing her own story

For the second straight year, Aluki Chupik-Hall won her division in the Guelph Public Library/Vocamus Press teen writing contest
20190613 story contest ts
Aluki Chupik-Hall has won her age group in the library's annual short story contest the past two years. Tony Saxon/GuelphToday

Not many teenagers can say they've written one book, never mind two.

But Guelph CVI Grade 10 student Aluki Chupik-Hall has done that, one around 70,000 words when she was 11, the other 80,000 when she was 12.

"They aren't very good," Chupik-Hall admits with a little laugh. "I'd like to reaffirm the fact that quantity does not equal quality."

The books might be learning experiences, but Chupik-Hall's writing is anything but terrible.

She recently won her division in the Guelph Public Library Teen Writing Contest for the second consecutive year, with her short story Dead Churches being selected as the best.

"Basically the basis of the story is about sexual assault, charges and priests, which is kind of a relevant topic," Chupik-Hall said of her winning fiction in the Grade 9 and 10 category.

Chupik-Hall said her love of writing started a few years ago.

"I really enjoyed it, thought it was fun to do and kept doing it. Now it's kind of my thing and I can't really stop it," she said.

All the age group winners in the contest, which is co-sponsored by Guelph's Vocamus Press, are put together in an anthology called ETCH 2019 that will be available at the library and on the Vocamus Press website.

Ironically, Chupik-Hall said she doesn't read as much as she writes.

"I like to read when I'm not writing something, when I don't have a project on the go, but I feel that if I consume any media when I'm writing it influences whatever I'm doing," she said.

Her subject matter has a wide range, by design. She realizes she's still learning and wants to be open to all themes and styles.

"One of the only ways to learn is to consume and use the real world," Chupik-Hall said.

Her goal is to write a "good book," but lately has been focusing on short stories and screenplays.

Chupik-Hall said while not many her age write a lot, most teenagers have a creative outlet.

"I have a lot of friends that make music or make movies even," she said. "I feel everyone has the capacity to create, it's more open when you're younger because you have time to do stuff."

Here are the other winners:

GRADES 11 - 12
1st PLACE – "Our Highway" by Arden Day
2nd PLACE – "Protector" by Charlotte Strathy
3rd PLACE – "Lifeplace" by Morgan Curtis
RUNNER UP – "The First Snow" by Katie Gaskin
RUNNER UP – "A Time for Change" by Abby Norris
RUNNER UP – "The Good, The Bad, and Everything in Between" by Jenny Luu

RUNNER UP – "Midnight Ocean" by Ashley Geddes
RUNNER UP – "Curse of the Reaper" by Julia Rose Blyth

GRADES 9 - 10
1st PLACE – "Dead Churches" by Aluki Chupik-Hall
2nd PLACE – "The Park" by Alex Petrie
3rd PLACE –  "A Shimmer of Red" by Melia Tessel
RUNNER UP – "Run" by Flip Walker
RUNNER UP – "Voices" by Stella ChuchMach
RUNNER UP – "Paint" by McKenna McFatridge
RUNNER UP – "A Kind Gesture" by Kira Calvin
RUNNER UP – "The Unknown Murderer" by Jorja Ann Dankert

GRADES 7 - 8
1st PLACE – "Murky Waters" by Mirren Litchfield
2nd PLACE – "The Day I Met Death" by Callista Pitman
3rd PLACE – "War is a Cruel Thing" by Ethan Hill
RUNNER UP – "Ordinary" by Sadie Pattison
RUNNER UP – "Every Star Has a Story" by Stella Patterson
RUNNER UP – "Working a Legacy" by Jiansen Zhang

Here is Chupik-Hall's winning submission:

Dead Churches

We call them dead churches. They are the rib-cages of some great beast, vast but empty, drying in the woods. Maybe some animals can be pretty, dip their long, elegant, noses into the river and draw the liquid up into their strong bodies. Maybe their outsides are unmarked. Maybe their insides are warm and safe and everything holy. But not all of them.

 I look at my feet, my black shiny dress shoes, dangling off the edge of the pew. Do I dare look up, meet the sure gaze of the priest? If I look inside him he will be empty, like all things he claims holy. If I look inside him I am afraid I will know him too well.

My palms sweat as my fingers find and curl around the wooden edge of my seat. He sounds like he’s singing a love song. His voice sounds too big to fit through his throat, and to compensate he twists it into spirals, curls it up and down. I know that he doesn’t hear himself speak, that he’s stared at the bible so long that the words stop looking like words altogether. I know this because he told me, a month and three days ago (I counted), in the bathroom when nobody was looking. He said that it was a secret. He said that what we did next was a secret too.

I figured out pretty quickly that everyone has their sin. Some people bet at the racetrack, or eat too many sweets. His was more malevolent than that, and he shared it with me that day, passed it like a spirit from his body to mine. It was big and heavy, like my father’s coat, but it was mine, and I had to take it with me. It felt like an allergic reaction every time my shoes hit the church steps. My throat swelled up and suddenly, the room was too large, too devoid of God to hold any significance.

Disease took the church. Like a sturdy, proud, beast, it slowly fell from grace. There was a flicker of illness in its belly, and it overtook the body like crawling vines up a brick wall. The life disappeared from the stained glass windows until the only thing holding it upright was me.

Now, I can’t hear what he is saying. His words are clear individually, but together they tangle, and I can’t grasp the meaning behind them. What’s more is my body rejects his voice like a virus. I contemplate confession, wonder about the consequences of standing now and returning his sin to him, but I can’t move. I sit, still grasping at the seat, my sin swelling and pounding like another heart.

We call them dead churches. They are the mangled bodies of children who are taught to swim but ordered to drown


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Tony Saxon

About the Author: Tony Saxon

Tony Saxon has had a rich and varied 30 year career as a journalist, an award winning correspondent, columnist, reporter, feature writer and photographer.
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