2009

Sam Szabo

I am an aspiring writer, artist, and publisher. Thanks to the Nicole Lemieux Knight scholarship, I attended Oberlin College from 2009 through 2013, where I majored in Creative Writing. During my tenure as a Creative Writing student, I studied (and, on occasion, taught) comics and graphic narrative studies, as well as rudimentary self-publishing. Along with several other artists, I founded the Oberlin Comics Collective, a student organization designed to facilitate and distribute student comics art publications. Since graduating in the spring of 2013, I have lived in Portland Oregon, where I am an active member of the Pacific Northwest's self-publishing community. While working a variety of odd jobs around the city, I have printed and distributed dozens of comics, magazines, and art anthologies.

            I am immensely grateful to have been the recipient of the Nicole Lemieux Knight scholarship six years ago. The award is intended to support young scholars of "free spirit and creative vision" - it was inspiring and humbling, as an insecure teenager, to have those qualities attributed to me. The Knight Scholarship enabled me to attend the college of my choice, Oberlin, an academic institution that truly allowed its students to pursue their unique, and often idiosyncratic, creative visions. My own sights were set on graphic novels, comics, and the intersection between word and image. My studies brought me to a relatively obscure and non-commercial corner of the art world, one that few academic institutions include in their curricula. Oberlin allowed me to study my subject of choice, Creative Writing, under a wide variety of brilliant, supportive writers. The college also offered me the academic freedom to explore my personal, more esoteric art interests on a largely self-directed track. Few schools could have offered me more options; few schools could have given me more control over my own individual path to post-high school education. I feel very lucky to have attended Oberlin, and very lucky indeed to have received the Knight scholarship. The mission statement of this scholarship isn't just some abstract idea; in a very real way, the Knight scholarship enabled me to pursue my own "creative vision" through college and into adulthood. I can't think of a better or more fitting tribute to Ms. Knight herself.