SAIPAN — The Northern Marianas Humanities Council is accepting high school essays for its A250 My Marianas Writing Contest through 11:59 p.m. Sunday, May 31, after Super Typhoon Sinlaku disrupted the original deadline.
Program Manager Andrew Roberto said the contest’s first deadline fell the week Sinlaku made landfall, and the Council pushed it back as recovery got underway. He said the Council has been contacting principals and teachers across its network to share the new deadline with students.
The annual personal narrative essay contest carries added significance in 2026, a year Roberto called pivotal for the CNMI. The Commonwealth’s Covenant turns 50 the same year the United States marks 250 years since its founding. This year’s theme is “A part of/Apart from.”
The contest asks high school students across public and private schools to write a personal narrative describing a specific experience that captures what it means to be from the CNMI. Students are asked to dedicate part of the essay to the nuanced ways living here makes them feel a part of or apart from the larger United States, and to describe what they want to see for the CNMI’s political relationship with the United States over the next 50 years.
Roberto said the experience can be a large community event, an island-wide tradition, or something intimate such as a daily cultural practice. “It’s really up to them. It’s how creative they want to get with this thing,” he said.
The contest awards cash prizes of $500 for first place, $400 for second and $300 for third. Roberto, a former CNMI public school teacher, said winners will be published in local media, and that the Council will compile the best work into an anthology for distribution at the library and at public and private high schools, even for essays that place outside the top three.
“I used to teach in the CNMI public school system, so I have firsthand knowledge that we have very talented young people on this island, and some of them just don’t think that they can do it, but they absolutely can,” Roberto said.
Roberto also warned students not to use artificial intelligence to write their essays, saying one submission attempted it and the AI began fabricating content. He said AI-written work is detectable and will disqualify an entry.
Essays must be submitted in PDF format to info@nmhcouncil.org. Submission guidelines, the writing prompt, the scoring rubric and a required publishing consent form are available on the Council’s website at nmhcouncil.org. The consent form requires a parent signature.
