Four Students Receive Achievement Awards From Boca Pen Women

By | May 19, 2018

This article, written by Pen Woman Meryl Davids, is reprinted with permission from BocaNewsNow.com.

 

Boca, Boynton Students Receive Significant Arts Scholarships

Darah Abrams, a resident of Boca Raton, who attends the Dreyfoos School of the Arts, will receive a $1000 scholarship to pursue her studies in choreography. Abrams appeared in numerous shows at Dreyfoos and also at the Lake Worth Playhouse. She recently danced in, and was associate choreographer for, the show Kiss Me Kate at her school.  (The photo shows Abrams dancing in this show—she’s in the red shorts, front left.)

Noelle J. Putnik, who lives in Boynton Beach and is a student at Florida Atlantic University, will receive $1200 to study the visual arts. Putnik is the daughter of Boca Pen Women member Michelle Putnik, who is a writer. (Noelle actually illustrated Michelle’s award winning  book, Dobin.) This award is named for the late Dori Popoenoe, a longtime artist and member of Boca Pen Women who, with her husband, left money to the group establishing a trust for art studies.

Caitlin Lee Nobile, a Boynton Beach resident, will receive the other art award. Nobile will be awarded her bachelor’s in art degree from Florida Atlantic University this spring, and will use her $1000 scholarship to pursue a master’s in fine arts from the University of South Florida in Tampa.

The fourth scholarship is being awarded to Alexandra Monte, a Boca resident, who also won one of the three scholarships awarded by Boca Pen Women last year. Her $1000 prize will enable her to continue her studies in creative writing. Monte attends Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania, and is currently working on a historical fiction novel that takes place in fifteenth-century France. Her award was presented at the March business meeting and luncheon of Boca Pen Women while she was on spring break, where she read from her work.

Three awards will be presented at the lunch meeting of the Boca Raton Branch of the National League of American Pen Women on Thursday, April 19th.

The National League of American Pen Women is a nonprofit women’s arts organization founded in 1897. It works to encourage, recognize, and promote the production of creative work of professional standard in Art, Letters, and Music. The Boca Raton branch, one of the largest in the United States, meets monthly from October through April.