The 2025 edition of Marginal will have this image created by Annabelle Liu, who won first place in the art competition.

Marginal, the literary magazine at Hopkinton High School, earned the first class award, the highest honor, from the National Council of Teachers of English in the 2024 REALM competition. This is the third time Marginal achieved this honor, previously receiving it in 2020 and 2022.

The achievement marks the first time a New England publication has won that award more than twice.

In addition, the school magazine was named Most Outstanding High School Literary Magazine by the American Scholastic Press Association for the second time, the previous honor occurring in 2021.

Only four magazines annually earn this accolade.

Benjamin Lally, a Hopkinton High School English teacher and the magazine’s advisor, said he always is surprised and pleased when the publication receives national recognition.

This year’s magazine ran longer than usual at 128 pages (the average is 90-100), which allowed a variety of students to have their work highlighted while still maintaining the high quality of the included pieces, he said.

Lally believes the magazine earned recognition thanks in part because the quantity of artwork has increased dramatically over the past four years with the support of the HHS Art Department.

“This shift has ensured that we can fill the magazine with really thoughtful and striking pieces of artwork,” Lally said.

Another reason for its success, he believes, was the “unusually excellent variety in the genres” of fiction that they published.

The advisor noted he has seen more than 100 different high school literary magazines. The most significant way Marginal differentiates itself from most is by how its design and layout “consciously stay unobtrusive,” he said.

“The magazine aims to highlight the skills of Hopkinton’s talented writers, poets and artists and to present those works as cleanly and professionally as possible,” Lally explained. “A lot of magazines aim for a more involved and complicated aesthetic, which frequently draws attention away from the student pieces.”

Still, Lally said he would love to feature what some of the other magazines are doing by including more interactive submissions — original songs, short films, recitations and 3D artwork.

He said those features could be accessed by using a QR code to link to the original works.

Both the National Council of Teachers of English and American Scholastic Press Association post the winning magazines on their websites and send out official certificates recognizing the honorees. The REALM competition also features an interactive map of all magazines that have won its contest over the past 17 years (bit.ly/NCTEREALM).

At Hopkinton High School, Lally said the awards were announced in the student and staff memos and on the television screen in the English hall.

In addition, Principal Evan Bishop spoke about the accomplishments at a recent faculty meeting, there is a display in the school library, and Lally keeps the certificates for all the awards displayed in his classroom.

The cover image of the 2025 edition of Marginal was created by Annabelle Liu, who won first place in the art competition.

In-house writing contests held at HHS

Lally noted that Marginal also recently finished the last of its three major writing contests of the year. May Chen won the poetry contest for the third straight year in the contest with the most submissions.

Sophomore Yixuan Li won the short story contest and Megan Cappetta won the school’s most prestigious contest, the Senior-Write-Is competition, which is open to all types of writing but only for members of the senior class.

Senior Megan Cappetta’s winning HHS essay is about her job and the bus.

Cappetta said that her winning essay was inspired by two influential places in her life: her bus and her job.

“When people first read my submission, it can be a little confusing, but as time goes on, the structure and idea of the essay start to make sense,” she noted.

Cappetta wrote about these aspects of her life because she could not just choose one.

“My job is one of the things I cherish the most, and I’ve had some interesting experiences on the bus, so I thought, why not combine them?” she said.

The winners are featured on the slide show in the English hallway, and their accomplishments are announced on the school website.