Scholarship winner gets spot in web series
A budding author from Peoria has won a $5,000 scholarship from the Taco Bell Foundation that will help him attend Northern Arizona University this fall. The hard-earned prize comes with another bonus: He will be featured as part of a web series that will air on A Plus and Upworthy starting Thursday, Aug. 25.
Justin Susan, 17, already has written an 80,000-word book, which he hopes to have published. It’s quite a turnaround: In his episode, which runs under five minutes, he talks about reading and writing at a fifth-grade level when he was in middle school.
The Centennial High School grad says he finds inspiration from other writers in the video: “I think about if J.K. Rowling would have stopped ... it just keeps me going.”
Susan also talks about the importance of his heritage. He is a member of the White Mountain Apache Tribe.
“When my grandmother was on her deathbed, I told her I’m going to be the best Native American writer ever,” he says. “I never wanted to be a person that forgot where I came from.”
Andrew Droz Palermo, a filmmaker whose 2014 documentary “Rich Hill” won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, directs “The Charter Class,” the fourpart series which features Susan.
The episode also will be available on the Taco Bell Live Más Scholarship website beginning Friday, and a clip from the program will air during Sunday’s broadcast of the MTV Video Music Awards.
The Taco Bell Live Más Scholarship program was launched at the end of 2015. It targets students with a passion and doesn’t focus on grades.
Students who apply create a two-minute video in which they explain how the scholarship money will help them achieve their goals. Taco Bell has given out $1 million in scholarships through the program.