Young Authors Gala

December 6, 2016 Vanessa Archive, Childrens Blog, Kids

In the 3 years I have been at this library, I have watched the Write & Illustrate program grow exponentially in writing submissions, total number of authors and participating schools.

For the 23^rd Annual Write & Illustrate contest in 2013, we had 57 authors participate from 4 different area schools.

2014 was the first year we tried out new categories for the contest. Writers were able to win for Best Story or Most Creative Story. We had 85 authors from 3 different area schools. We also had a special guest, Marie-Helene Bertino, who wrote and illustrated the story The Dream Crystal and won the very first Write and Illustrate contest in 1990. Marie is now a published author living in New York City.

Last year we celebrated the 25^th Annual Write & Illustrate contest! 92 authors participated from 3 different schools. To honor 25 years of the Write & Illustrate contest, we presented a slide show of every winning book cover.

I am happy to say that the contest has continued to grow even more for the 26^th annual Write & Illustrate contest this year. We had 96 authors submit stories from 9 area schools! This is the biggest year for the contest yet, so you can imagine how challenging the decision making process was for the judges.

The stories are judged by local librarians and retired teachers, and I can assure you they really make the effort to award the best stories in each grade.

I want to congratulate all the young authors who took time to write and create their stories for this year’s contest. Here are the 2016 winners:

Kindergarten: