School One and Goat Hill are pleased to announce the winning entries of Rhode Island’s only short fiction writing competition for students. Competition was stiff this year, with over more 150 story submissions from students in grades 7-12 from all across Rhode Island.
Three years ago School One and Goat Hill Writers launched Write Rhode Island, a short story competition for any Rhode Island student.
School One has long been known as an innovative high school with strong arts and humanities programs. After-school and on the weekends, School One offers a wealth of creative writing opportunities for School One students and teens in Rhode Island and beyond.
Head of School, Jennifer Borman explains, “We love being part of helping teens find their voices and stretch themselves as writers. Write Rhode Island opens up that opportunity for all kinds of teens from all kinds of schools. Their story submissions have been lively, strange, sad, subtle, funny, and often very moving. We’ve seen young writers really rise to the occasion.”
Goat Hill, a collaboration between Rhode Island authors Ann Hood, Hester Kaplan, and Taylor Polites, offers literary events, workshops and seminars to cultivate writers and writing community in Southern New England (www.goathillwriters.com). Each year Goat Hill selects the winning entries that are published in the Write Rhode Island anthology, a unique high quality print publication. This year, Goat Hill invited singer-songwriter-author Bill Harley, master storyteller Len Cabral and Young Adult author Katie Cotugno to help select the top middle school stories.
When asked about the judging process, Goat Hill said, “We are impressed every year by the passion and imagination the young writers of our state bring to the stories they tell, and we are thrilled to honor their work and creative spirit through Write Rhode Island. But we don’t do it alone–over forty volunteer readers helped us judge the stories along with the three great new judges for the 7th-9th grade stories, making the entire program an act of statewide writing community.”
The winners of the Write Rhode Island short story competition will be honored at a special awards ceremony at the Newport Art Museum on April 7, 2019. The twenty young writers whose submissions are the winning entries will receive awards and prizes at the event. The young writers will also be invited to read their stories at PVD FRINGE as part of Family Fringe on Saturday, July 27, 2019.s
