Addison Hill: Writer, Disability Activist, and Scholarship Winner

You will land where you’re meant to land

For the last four years, Addison Hill has attended an arts boarding school in Northern Michigan nestled between pine tree forests and the Green Lake shore.

Hill is on the cusp of graduating from the Interlochen Arts Academy, where she is specializing in creative writing. The accomplished writer and disability activist is set to attend the University of Pennsylvania in the fall, where she will study English and Creative Writing with the support of a Coca-Cola Scholarship.

She will be leaving one creative retreat for another.

At Penn, Hill plans to join the Kelly Writers’ House, a live-in literary hub for students, faculty, and Philadelphia-based writers, where she previously took part in a two-week summer workshop.

“I'm going to be a lifelong activist. I consider myself an activist both on the page and off the page.”

During that program, Hill “fell in love” with the experience of congregating in the kitchen, baking cookies where she takes classes, and exploring Philadelphia. It “really called my name,” she said. “I looked at Penn, and I saw the Writers’ House.”

Yet that goal often felt out of reach for the Houma, Louisiana native, who also lives with chronic pain caused by Amplified Musculoskeletal Pain Syndrome (AMPS).

The desire to live and write in a creative community was there early.

In elementary and middle school, Hill tore through most of the popular middle grade authors in the Houma public library. In those stories, “everyone's always going to boarding school,” she said. “If all my favorite characters went to boarding school growing up, I [thought] ‘I want to go to boarding school.’

In second grade, Hill wrote her first story: “it was a grammatical mess, but I knew I was creative.” In fifth grade, she finished an 88,000-word novel.

Finishing the novel brought lingering satisfaction: “It just hit me all at once, that I had created something, and it was all mine, and I just have been chasing that feeling ever since,” she said. By the time she was twelve, Hill had written a dystopian story about an imperfect girl shunned by her community for being color-blind, which was published in an anthology of work by young authors. Soon, she was winning writing competitions and other accolades.

Knowing that she wanted to pursue an academic career and eventually earn a PhD, Hill started looking up boarding schools online. While nobody in her family had gone to boarding school, they supported her plan.

Right at the start of eighth grade, the family’s plans were altered forever.

On August 30, 2021, Hurricane Ida made landfall in nearby Port Fourchon, Louisiana as a major Category 4 hurricane. The devastating storm caused widespread damage to many bayou communities, including Houma.

“Our house was in disrepair,” said Hill. “We became climate refugees.”

Hill’s father was offered a job in Michigan. As soon as she found out, Hill began looking up art schools in the area.

“I really wanted to go to an arts-based high school that would be a strong environment for me, and I ended up with this one, and I'm really happy here,” she said.

At Interlochen, Hill has been preparing for college and applying for scholarships while living with other young artists and professional writers. She reads Karen Russell, Mona Awad, and Carmen Mario Machado, and continues to publish poems and short stories.

Amid this flurry of activity, she has also been struggling with pain and fatigue.

The feeling isn’t new. She first started experiencing it in seventh grade; in February of sophomore year, the pain became unbearable. In April 2024, she was diagnosed with Amplified Musculoskeletal Pain Syndrome, a chronic condition which can cause persistent pain and extreme fatigue.

Hill’s symptoms worsen periodically. She sometimes struggles to sit up for prolonged periods of time, as when taking the SAT, and can feel an intense exhaustion which makes it difficult to reach for a cable if she needs to charge her phone.

“The amount of work that I'm doing feels like the same amount of work that my able-bodied peers are doing, even though it is, on paper, less work,” she said. At Interlochen, Hill co-founded her school’s Disability Student Union, and volunteers with the Northern Michigan Disability Network.

AMPS symptoms interfered with Hill’s scholarship search in junior and senior year. The work of applying for scholarships was strenuous, so she was selective with applications. Scholarships.com “streamlined the scholarship application process,” she said.

The site made it easier to apply for scholarships for which she qualified. She focused on scholarships fitting her demographic, and the Coca-Cola scholarship.

After receiving disappointing college admissions news during “a very difficult” winter break and hearing no response from any other scholarships, she found out that she had become a regional finalist for the Coca-Cola scholarship; after even more rejections, she got into her dream school.

“Penn was the absolute last decision that I opened up, and I thought that it was over for me,” she said. “But there was a light at the end of the tunnel … I'm just so lucky to be pursuing higher education in my dream environment.”

Hill would be going to the Writers’ House on a Coca-Cola scholarship.

The change in outlook has been boosted by the network of opportunities offered by the scholarship. Through the program, Hill has met other disability activists and climate refugees from the South.

“It’s so motivating to be surrounded by people who all have the same focus of … want[ing] to bring good into this world, and … want[ing] to do it surrounded by love and care,” she said.

At Penn, Hill intends to combine writing with disability activism, and hopes to advocate for legislation that helps pediatric chronic pain patients. “I'm going to be a lifelong activist. I consider myself an activist both on the page and off the page.”

Her advice to students who are applying for scholarships, and in particular for students with disabilities, is to “know that even if they do deal with health complications, that their futures are not over. They just might have to take a detour.”

“The shoes that they walk in are not the only shoes that they could be walking in,” she said.

When faced with the inevitable rejections that come with the college and scholarship application process, it is important to remember that “you will land where you're meant to land.”