From staff reports
Beaufort High School senior Rebecca Thompson has been selected as the winner of the fifth annual Ann Head Literary Prize for short story fiction. Thompson will receive a $500 cash award, publication of an excerpt from her prize-winning story “The Canary Rain Boots” in Lowcountry Weekly, and her addition to the award plaque at Beaufort High School, joining previous winners Claire Bowden, Holland Perryman, Christine Conte, and Mickie Thompson.
Ranked academically in the Top 10 of her BHS graduating class, Thompson is a past commander and current member of the Junior ROTC, the Green Team, and the Kitty Hawk Honor Society. She is also a member of the National Honor Society, DAYLO (Diversity Awareness Youth Literacy Organization), BHS orchestra, and Beaufort Children’s Theatre.
A Beaufort County School District Senior Scholar and AP Scholar, Thompson has also been honored with the Palmetto Fellows Scholarship, the Nu Delta Omega Chapter Scholarship of Alpha Kappa Alpha, the Air Force ROTC Scholarship, the Air and Space Forces Association Award, the Distinguished Cadet Award, and National Sojourners Award, among other honors. Thompson will begin her studies in the Honors College at the University of South Carolina this fall, majoring in psychology.
In addition to writing her prize-winning short story, Thompson is also the author of two published novels, “The Girl in the Tree” and its sequel, “Seeking the Truth.” In that capacity, she will be the featured writer at the Pat Conroy Literary Center’s monthly Open Mic Night from 6 to 7:30 p.m., Thursday, July 11.
This year, two Ann Head Literary Prize finalists were also identified by the judges: BHS freshman Kenadie Daniels for her story “One Day,” and fellow freshman Shaniya Martin for “The Death of an Artist and the Resurrection of the Muse.”
The Ann Head Literary Prize is coordinated on campus at Beaufort High School by English teacher Michael Gautier and off campus by Pat Conroy Literary Center Executive Director Jonathan Haupt. The competition is judged and sponsored by members of Ann Head’s family.
The prize was established by the family of Beaufort-born writer Ann Head, the pen name of Anne Wales Christensen Head Morse (1915–1968). Head published more than fifty short stories and serials in the major national magazines of her day, with many of her stories set in a small town much like Beaufort. She wrote of divorce, snobbery, affairs emotional and sexual, prejudice, death, and out-of-wedlock childbirth, championing the non-typical heroines of the magazines that eagerly accepted her work. In addition, she authored four novels which were published internationally, most notably Mr. and Mrs. Bo Jo Jones, a compelling story of teen pregnancy which was on school reading lists for 50 years and is credited with helping create the Young Adult novel genre.
Head was also Pat Conroy’s first creative writing teacher at Beaufort High School and became Conroy’s mentor, confidante, and friend. She was posthumously inducted in the South Carolina Academy of Authors, the Palmetto State’s literary hall of fame, on May 4, 2024.
