Dorchester’s Elizabeth Seton Academy (ESA) isn’t letting its modest-sized student body or the lack of a big campus stop it from offering high-quality, wide-ranging arts programming. Already this year, the young women of ESA have published a literary magazine and participated in a poetry competition, and next month they’ll present their first juried arts show.

The sole remaining all-girls’ Catholic high school in Boston, ESA is a private, urban, college preparatory high schoo1 with just under 100 enrollees that ESA opened its doors to its first classes on Sept. 8, 2003, at the site of the former Saint Gregory Parish High School in Lower Mills.

During the year, ESA’s art department, headed by practicing painter Amanda Herzog, introduces students to a wide variety of media: painting, printmaking, sculpture, graphic arts and digital art. Student-artists are recognized at an award ceremony hosted by the mayor, and ESA artwork has appeared on various billboards around the city.

Early last month, ESA published Paper Planes, its literary magazine, and this volume featured students’ artwork, poetry, and short stories. The young authors were inspired by their favorite songs and novels, but most importantly by poets like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.

Elana Aurise, ESA’s advancement manager/alumnae coordinator, noted, “True to our education, service, and achievement mission, these 11 staffers have learned to create and execute an idea, work together as a team, and use the tools necessary to publish their magazine at no financial cost.”

The day following the release of Paper Planes, ESA hosted its second annual Poetry Out Loud competition. This friendly rivalry demonstrated how well a student can verse and memorize a poem with the correct rhyme and meter. Eight students recited poems by Al Young, Emily Dickinson, and Maya Angelou, among many others. Peers, faculty, and staff were there to support the students’ efforts.

Ultimately, three students stood out: For best dramatic appropriateness, it was Sheila Duplan, who recited “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” by Langston Hughes; runner-up was Shannon Flaherty, who recited “Domestic Situation” by Ernest Hilbert. The overall winner was Kailana Harriot, who recited “The Animals in that Country” by Margaret Atwood.

The winning performances can be viewed on ESA’s YouTube channel at youtube.com/TheESABoston.

Next weekend (March 6-8), Elizabeth Seton Academy will be presenting its first juried art show. The opening reception will be on Fri., March 6, frfom 5 to 8 p.m. at Labouré College, 303 Adams St., Milton. The showcase, a wide variety of media co-sponsored by Labouré and Art New England, will be judged by three high profile artists: Debbie Hagan, editor-in-chief of Art New England;, Lower Mills’s Jim Scherer, an award-winning commercial food and still life photographer; and Scherer’s wife, Elena Balmaseda-Scherer, a noted botanical artist.

How did ESA get the editor of “New England’s leading visual arts and contemporary culture magazine” to head the jury of its first art show ever? For starters, Visual Arts teacher Amanda (Montgomery) Herzog is the daughter of Tim Montgomery, the publisher of Art New England.

In addition to the visual and literary arts programming, ESA has a choral group (headed by Spanish teacher Robert Congdon) that participates in school liturgies and performs at the Christmas Gathering and Spring Festival of the Arts. ESA students are slated to hear performances by the Boston Symphony on March 25, and by the Handel and Haydn Society on April 9.

St. Elizabeth Seton, a fine pianist and great lover of poetry and other literature, must be very proud!