Guest judge for 2025, Poet Monica Lee Weatherly, selects top stories for RAP.

MADISON, Ga. — The Morgan County African American Museum and its partners announce the winners of the Raymond Andrews Prize for Creative Writing contest for the 2024-2025 academic year. The guest judge for 2025, Monica Lee Weatherly, has made her selections from finalists chosen by a panel of readers.

Catie Malcome, a junior at Morgan County High School, wins top prize with her story “Song of the Night.” Guest judge Monica Lee Weatherly says “Song of the Night” is “a tale of horror and suspense that stays with the reader long after the story is finished.” Malcome also won first prize in the 2023-2024 school year as a freshman. She is the first ever two-time winner of the Raymond Andrews Prize for Creative Writing. She wins the grand prize of $400.

Malcome is followed by Gabrielle Massey, a senior at MCHS. She wins $200 for her story “Girl of the Earth.” Junior Ella Watson and senior Reese McPherson finish third and fourth, respectively. Watson and McPherson win $100 each for their stories. Contestants receiving honorable mention include Jael Homan, Nick Brown, Tenley Gaddy and Za’kiyah Griffith.

Cash prizes will be awarded to the winning students at a public reading on Tuesday, May 13, 2025 at Betty Gene’s in Madison. The public is invited to attend. The winner will cut the Appalachee Red Velvet Cake at 5:30 PM.  Students will read their winning stories from 6 PM until 6:45 PM.

The purpose of the contest is to foster excitement for creative writing among area youth. Entries are judged blindly by a team of volunteer readers. Each story is read by at least two judges. Judges use a standardized rating system. Entries earning the most points from the reading pool were passed along to our 2025 guest judge, Monica Lee Weatherly, who then made the final selections.

Monica Lee Weatherly is a poet, writer, and Professor of English at Georgia State University (Perimeter College). She is the 2023 winner of Georgia Author of the Year for her chapbook of poetry, “It Felt Like Mississippi,” a 2023 Key West Literary Seminar Fellowship recipient, and the 2021 winner of the Willie Morris Prize for Southern Poetry. Her writing often focuses on the culture and experiences of people of color in the American South. Weatherly will attend the reading at Betty Gene’s.

Raymond Andrews, the namesake for the prize, was born in the Plainview Community of Morgan County in 1934. He published three novels and four other books. Almost all of them are set in the fictional Muskhogean County, which is a stand-in for Morgan County. Andrews is a member of the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame. He passed away in 1991.