Brandi Swingley, a senior at Capital High School, was mourning the death of her great-grandfather and had writer's block when a friend suggested looking inside herself for inspiration, in places she'd usually avoid.

Her friend said to try to take something good come from her loss.

"All the stuff that he has done for us and my family keeps him alive," Swingley said.

The piece that resulted, "Grief is Timeless," is a poem inspired by the emotions of losing her great-grandfather.

"Some things stay the same through time, like losing a loved one," Swingley said. "I tried to combine the ideas that even though time changes, people don't. Once you are gone, all that is left is who you've helped, the things you've changed and the hearts that you've touched."

Swingley was one of four local high school students who recently won the Harrison Writing Award from the Helena Education Foundation. The other recipients are Helena High School junior Erinleigh Caughron, Captial sophomore Renee Elsen and Helena High senior Alexis Graman.

The Harrison Award is a targeted donation to HEF in memory of Ethel Harrison by her daughter, Lee Harrison, who selected the award's purpose in order to focus the community's attention on the importance of good writing skills.

Local author Clay Scott was among the committee members to select the winning writing from fiction and non-fiction categories.

He said often committee members agree on the best entries, even though there are superb pieces that are neck-and-neck until the end.

"Every year there are some difficult choices," Scott said. "This year we were really blown away by the range of the entries and the depth. (Students) showed a nuance and maturity you wouldn't find in a high school writing class."

Caughron's piece was about a novel, "The Grass Dancer," that she read last summer . Her essay is titled, "A Struggle to Stay: Preserving a Culture."

"My essay describes the conflict between Native Americans who want to preserve the culture, but they also see the importance of assimilating into the prevalent white culture they live in," she said.

Just by living in Montana, Caughron said she's exposed to those concepts.

"It's important for people who live in the lands that were originally Native Americans' and the struggles they went through to adapt to the culture we brought in," she said.

Graman wrote a short story he titled "David's Hike," and Elsen wrote about the tradition at Grandstreet Theatre and her experience performing in "Fiddler on the Roof."

Elsen has been involved with the local theater since the third grade, but said that particular play was an exceptional experience because of her fellow cast members, whom she felt were like family members.

"It's is place where you can be yourself," she said. "You can learn and have fun at the same time."

This year, according to Ron Lee, HEF board member and chairman of the Harrison committee, entries in the competition were linked with submission to "Pen and Ink," the collaborative, student-published high school literary magazine.

"It has always been a great pleasure to see the variety, the originality and the vitality of the writing that comes in to us each year," Lee said. "It has been very helpful to us to have the opportunity this year to link our submission process with that of the student arts and literary magazine, 'Pen and Ink.'

"That clearly meant for us an increase in the quality and quantity of writing that we received."

Click here to read the students' writing and learn more about the HEF.

Reporter Alana Listoe: 447-4081 or alana.listoe@helenair.com