Two Bulloch County Schools students are advancing to the state level of the Young Georgia Authors contest after their literary works were selected from 17 counties’ entries as the First District region winners for their grade levels. Two additional students’ essays also received top-three placements in the competition.
Isla Hansen, a second-grade student at Mill Creek Elementary, is her grade level’s region winner with her story, “The Winter Wonderland, Book 1,” and Evy Shen, a senior at Statesboro High School, is the region winner for twelfth grade with her essay, “Undocumented.”
Their works will now be judged with grade-level winners from each of the state’s 16 Regional Education Service Agency (RESA) regions. State winners will be announced on the Young Georgia Author’s website by the end of the school year.
While not advancing to state competition, Bulloch County Schools did have two other students whose compositions were recognized by the judges. Anna Claire Newman, a sixth-grader from Southeast Bulloch Middle School, was the first runner-up for her grade level with her short story, “How I Died,” and Phoebe Hansen of Langston Chapel Middle School won second-place for seventh grade with her work, “The Chase.”
An appointed committee of English language arts professionals brought together by the First District Regional Education Service Agency (RESA) judged each of the 17-member school districts’ system winners to select region winners for each grade level to advance to state. School districts could submit one entry per grade level (K-12) to the regional competition.
Unlike many writing competitions, Young Georgia Authors does not provide a writing prompt for students or any other boundaries to their genre choice or creativity beyond a 1900-word maximum length. Students write and submit original works ranging from poetry, short stories, essays, journalism, and more. Their works could not be part of a collaboration with another student or a class assignment in which they had previously received feedback from their teacher. Judges evaluate entries based on expression of ideas, language use, perspective and voice.
According to the Young Georgia Authors’ website, the purpose of the competition is to “encourage students to develop enthusiasm for and expertise in their writing, to provide a context to celebrate their writing successes, and to recognize student achievement in arts and academics.”
The competition is sponsored by the Georgia Language Arts Supervisors Organization (GLAS) and the Georgia RESA Network with support from the Georgia Department of Education. The competition has encouraged writing skills and provided an outlet for young authors for more than 20 years.
