VERO BEACH — An essay by Vero Beach resident Brooke Willis, a member of the Teen Writers Workshop, is featured in the Summer 2009 issue of The Concord Review, an internationally recognized journal for high school history students. Willis’s essay on Nellie Bly, the first female investigative journalist, was one of 11selected for the latest issue of the quarterly journal from submissions around the globe. “I’m excited and honored that my essay was chosen,” said Willis, a 2009 graduate of Saint Edward’s School who will be attending Bryn Mawr College this fall. “I feel privileged to be published alongside exemplary students from California to Cypress.” Willis said she chose Nellie Bly as a topic “because she broke into journalism in the late nineteenth century, which at the time was a man’s world. She succeeded not by emulating men, but by sheer wit, intelligence and feminine power.” Following in Bly’s footsteps, Willis has enjoyed some intrepid experiences of her own, including a stint for six-weeks last summer as an exchange student to Japan. She was one of 35 students from around the country selected for the Japan-U.S. Senate Exchange, underwritten by the Japanese government.This past school year, Willis, who is the daughter of David and Laura Willis, of Vero Beach, turned her Concord Review research paper into a one-woman show and performed several monologues at a “black box” theater production for the community.Willis is the first member of the Teen Writers Workshop to be published in The Concord Review, which was founded in 1987 by Will Fitzhugh to recognize exemplary history essays by high school students. Since that time, the journal has published the work of teen authors from 44 states and 35 foreign countries.
Teen Brooke Willis published in Concord Review
