By Alexander Kozub ’20

THE ROUNDUP

After Brett Cohen ’18 wrote a paper for English, sophomore English teacher and Brophy Literary & Arts Magazine (BLAM) Adviser, Mr. John Damaso ’97 asked Cohen to submit his work to Brophy Literary Arts Magazine. “He was in Honors English II and I noticed that he had a talent for the craft of creative writing so at that time I recommended that he submit to BLAM.”

Mr. Damaso had Cohen his Sophomore year for English and this year in Contemporary Humanities.

Mr. Damaso says that Cohen is a good student to have and is great in class for furthering the conversation and doing extra research outside of class.

“I do not know if you have been in a class where the class discussion is getting stale but he [Cohen] has a really good way of reviving it.” He also says that “Brett is always critically engaged with the class work and his classmates.”

Cohen writes in an unusually fast way.

“The kind of writer that I am, I usually just have an idea, sit down, and can get it done in an hour,” Cohen said. I will sometimes look it over after that but most of the time I feel comfortable submitting right away,” said Cohen.

Cohen has continually wrote for BLAM from his sophomore year entering pieces intermittently.

Cohen has accomplished a lot at Brophy such as writing pieces that are submitted to the BLAM magazine, being vice president of the Peer Editing Network (PEN), and getting a National Hispanic Scholarship and National Merit Semi Finals Award because of his PSAT scores, which is awarded to those students who get exceptional scores on the PSAT.

The National Hispanic Scholar scholarship is only presented to two percent of Hispanic high school juniors per year.  

Cohen is also applying for a scholarship from Youngarts which is a program that is focused on creative writing and other art.

Cohen does not know which college he would like to go to, but wherever he goes he is planning on continuing his writing outside of the classroom. He is planning not to major in writing in college, but he does plan on going into a field of some sort of writing after he graduates.