NC English Teachers Association Writing Awards

(At the annual NCETA convention in Winston-Salem last October: the three High School Poet Laureate Winners: from left Anuja Acharya, Katherine Indermaur, and Sarah Bruce.)


The North Carolina English Teachers Association sponsors three writing awards for students. The deadline for entries is April 15, so it's time for teachers to begin encouraging students to polish the poems, prose, and short fiction they've already written--or write something new!--that their schools may enter for these awards. To find out more about the awards, please go to ncenglishteacher.org and click on the student awards link for entry forms and contest guidelines. The guidelines for the Student Poet Laureate Awards may be found on the side bar of my ncpoetlaureate blog.



(JOHN YORK, former English Teacher of the Year, at the NCETA banquet)

In the fall of 2007, my family and I helped endow a new award through the NC English Teachers Association, the North Carolina Student Poet Laureate Awards for both high school and middle school students. I felt that poetry needed a special award to take its place beside the Wade Edwards Fiction Award and the essay awards handed out every year at the NCETA annual convention. The current state Poet Laureate will serve each year as final judge in the two categories, selecting the students who will serve as our Student Poetry Ambassadors until the following year. Students are invited to submit, through their teachers, their poems, which a member of NCETA will read, in order to make final recommendations to the current Laureate. This past year my preliminary reader was John York, whose splendid poem, "Naming the Constellations," won the 2008 NC Poetry Society's Poet Laureate award and was featured on this blog. He will again serve as preliminary reader, offering his recommendations to me.

John and I were delighted to be able to give the 2008 Laureate award to "Downtown After Dark" by Katherine Indermaur, Honorable Mention to "Death by Chocolate," by Anuja Acharya, and a Special Commendation to "yellow" by Sarah Bruce. All three students were nominated by Priscilla Chappell at Enloe High School in Raleigh and all three spoke of how much Ms. Chappell had opened up the world of poetry to them. We at NCETA and the Arts Council are excited about this new award and the excellent poetry these three young women have given us. We did not have enough entries for middle schoolers last year to have a real competition in that category. THIS YEAR we hope to have many more submissions from both levels.



(Our first NC Student Poet Laureate, Katherine Indermaur, with her mother, after the NCETA Awards banquet.)



(Our Honorable Mention winner, Anuja Acharya with her parents.)



(Judges Special Commendation winner Sarah Bruce with her parents.)

POEMS BY OUR 2008 WINNERS WILL BE POSTED ON TOMORROW'S BLOG.