Six Maryland Students Receive Awards for Writing Contest

Students and teacher honored at Maryland Humanities ceremony honoring state finalists for Letters About Literature

(Baltimore, MD) – Three Maryland students read their letters to authors onstage to a live audience in the Harry and Jeannette Weinberg Auditorium at Mercy High School on May 12. Each of these students took home the first place prize in the state for their age range in the 2018 Letters About Literature contest, a program of the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress, coordinated locally by Maryland Humanities. The three runners-up received awards, as well. One hundred ten finalists from across Maryland were honored at the ceremony in Baltimore City. Tara A. Elliott received the Christine D. Sarbanes Teacher of the Year Award, awarded to a Maryland teacher who works to promote reading by employing creative teaching methods to inspire students to read great literature. Elliot teaches English and Language Arts at Salisbury Middle School in Wicomico County.

Letters About Literature is a national program where students write to the author (living or dead) of a book, poem, or speech and express how the work changed their view of the world or themselves.  Letters are judged on state and national levels. More than 46,000 students from across the country entered Letters About Literature this year. Readers in grades 4–12 are eligible to enter the contest. The first place winners for each contest level advance to the national level of the competition. Read the letters from the Maryland winners.

Minh Lê—author of Let Me Finish! and the upcoming Drawn Together and Green Lantern: Legacy—gave the keynote address. In his remarks, Lê directly addressed each winner and runner-up with a response specific to the letter they wrote. The Honorable Paul Sarbanes, The Honorable John P. Sarbanes, Michael Sarbanes, and Becky Brasington Clark of the Library of Congress spoke as well.

See the list of Maryland winners