2014

GRAND PRIZE  |  ELEMENTARY
Graciela LEÓN – The Lucky One – was in 3rd grade at Coconut Grove Montessori.
Teacher: Ms. Yvonne Yeomanson.
Student of Miami Conservatory of Music.

Excerpt from the story
        Astrid Wild was probably the unluckiest girl, or at least she thought so.
Why? Because, at 10, she almost never had any fun and most importantly she couldn’t even spend time with her parents. You see, Clara and William Wild have meetings literally every hour of the day, even if they are home and not traveling to this country or that city, they are always busy. Astrid Wild is the President’s daughter. So now you are probably thinking …wow, she’s so lucky, but you’re really wrong.
        Even her friendships are complicated, always having to schedule play dates with nanny’s and bodyguards  just to go to the park, it’s not like regular neighborhood friends that can walk up to your door and ask if you can come and play … it’s the White House! ……..

GRAND PRIZE  |  MIDDLE SCHOOL
Quinn HARRELSON – A Blank Canvas – was in 7th grade at Ransom Everglades School.
Teacher: Mr. Charlie Housiaux.

Excerpt from the story
        Several weeks had passed since Maxwell Proctor had his first gallery show. His professor at Yale had recommended him to a gallery in Chelsea that had represented his childhood heroes and within a matter of months the lanky German owner of the gallery named Ansel, who told him that he wasn’t an art dealer, he was a gallerist who made artists’ careers, had given him a solo show. This was unheard of.  No artist fresh out of school ever got a solo show. After that show, he no longer had to bus tables, he was an instant art world celebrity.
        In the long weeks after the show blank canvases hung around his loft and haunted him like ghosts.  He could do nothing but blankly stare at them the way one would stare at the television set, while the phone rang off the hook with propositions of more solo shows around the globe, newspaper articles and even a documentary. His mail box was flooded with elaborate party invitations on thick card stock.  He was tom, should he go or should he paint. These invitations seemed to be the bane of his existence but they also reminded him of his instant success………

GRAND PRIZE  |  HIGH SCHOOL
Katherine COHEN – Woven – was in 9th grade at Gulliver Preparatory High School.
Teacher: Ms. Inelissa Artzt.

Excerpt from the story
        Time is an inevitable force, shifting and changing and forever continuing as I hang in my final resting place. All I have now is time and my fading story. My long life began in late spring in a small mud hut. A tale is woven in my strands, one of laughter, love, and tears. My home was surrounded by rocky fingers sporadically reaching up as if to touch the sky. Rings of amber and orange wound around their stone fingers. The sky was vast, immeasurable, eternal.

I was woven in the orange palm of the desert, created by caring hands with red and black dyed woolen yarn as life hummed gently around my growing patterns, as rain played its rare music on chalky ground, as life settled into my threads. Strand by strand, effort and tradition were interwoven with my balanced patterns. The world was bright and my colors brighter. As a new blanket woven with the tradition of centuries past, I was full of life and use and strength.

In my first years of life, time passed without my knowledge. The sun rose and fell like the blink of an eye. Sunset was nothing more than a sign of an approaching day. Though the memory is faint, I still remember the squirming bundle of life I swathed. They called her Mai, a strong name for such a gentle creature. She was so small, her tiny heart fluttered fast and light as a bird under my red and black shelter. Her new breath was warm and soft, unassuming in the world we now shared.

In the frigid nights, I hugged her tightly, protecting her from the biting fingers of cold that tried to reach through me to steal her precious warmth. In the heavy and hot days, I hid her from the bloodthirsty bugs that wanted to steal her life force and leave death spots on her dark silken skin. We were clean then, whole and untorn in the orange palm of the desert………

FIRST PLACE  |  ELEMENTARY
Martin JARAMILLO – One Man’s Rebellion – was in 4th grade at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Day School.
Teacher: Mrs. Eleni Garcés.

Excerpt from the story
        One sunny morning I woke up- and went to nearby houses begging people to join me if they agreed to end slavery. These neighbors lived in small houses and had small farms. This was good for me because if they had big plantations slavery might be important to them. One of my neighbors, John Clark, used to be a Federal soldier whose group of 50 men were captured by the Confederates. Only 12 of them escaped. He was one of them. Once I told him my ideas of rebelling against the Confederates, he was excited to join me! He came with me for two reasons. First, to get revenge on the Confederates for killing some of his friends and second because his father was a Union general captured by the other side and killed………

FIRST PLACE  |  MIDDLE SCHOOL
Valeria LOPEZ-TRUJILLO – Things That Matter – was in 8th grade at Carrollton School of the Sacred Heart.
Teacher: Ms. Shaune Scott. 
Student of Miami Conservatory of Music.

Excerpt from the story
        I didn’t understand. There was no possible way she could be here. It was hard to take in when she knocked on the front door. And now she was sitting in our living room, her sandy blond, long, straight hair covering her short, strapless, shiny, orange dress. My little sister kept looking at me and her, no doubt finding resemblances between the two of us. Her ponytail kept swishing whenever she turned. My father, who had recently came out from the bathroom, was studying the cracks on the floor with sunglasses that covered his red eyes. Every once in a while, he would glance up at her, but if she looked around where he was sitting for a second, he would look down at the cracks again. And me? I stared at my mother’s smug, small face. Her puffy lips were bright red, and her nose was stretched and turned up. Her eyes were small and green, the only noticeable difference between us, and they were cold and hard. She inspected the house with a face of disgust. We sat there for 20 minutes without talking to each other. I had a longing to leave but I couldn’t bring myself to get up. It’s been eight years since I last saw her; even all the pictures of her were thrown out. Finally my dad broke the silence….

… I walked up to the phone slowly as if it was a death machine. I didn’t want to but I knew I had to. There was something pushing me towards the phone, and I knew that I would never be able to do anything again if I didn’t confront her. I felt courage building up inside of me and the blood rushing through my veins. And before I reached the phone, I knew why I had to do it. I had to think of myself as the girl who stood up and said no to all the pretty things in life and said yes to all the true things. I stared at the phone for a long time and asked my dad for the phone number. My hands trembled as I dialed the number. I heard the dial tone and waited………

FIRST PLACE  |  HIGH SCHOOL
Eric YINWEI CAI – Misunderstanding– was in 9th grade at Ransom Everglades School. 
Teacher: Mrs. Corinne Rhyner. 

Excerpt from the story
        It was 5:56 when Reid drove into a parking lot in front of a clean white building. He walked up to the thick glass door, pulled a key card from his wallet, and unlocked the electronic lock. The interior of the building was quite similar to the outside, boasting an orderly appearance…. He entered his laboratory, using the same key card that he used to open the front door. A blast of cold air met him as he stepped inside, and the familiar smell of newly cleaned laboratory equipment reached his nose. The laboratory, mimicking the rest of the building, also had the same immaculate image… Keeping to his every day morning ritual, Reid emptied a single packet of sugar into his coffee, left it to cool, and unwrapped the sandwich. He opened his mouth, ready to bite into his sandwich, when his pager, buried in his back pocket, went off….

        That afternoon, the desperation in the atmosphere was higher than it had ever been before. Sick victims were dying every hour, and the few healthy villagers were brutally imprisoned in their own homes. Reid and Alan sat in a small laboratory, surrounded by test results and empty answers, on the verge of giving up. It was nearly midnight when Reid and Alan were forced to leave their lab and return home. As they walked through the darkness, Reid couldn’t help but notice that the streets, which had been bustling with excitement, were completely deserted now. That night, Reid dreamed of four years ago. Alan had approached him, asking him to help stop a contagious disease that was raging across several towns in western China. It took eighteen months, but in the end Reid and Alan had managed to find a cure. It was an experience that was both something that Reid wanted to forget, but also something that he considered one of the greatest accomplishments of his life………

Ilana REISER – The Tale of Evadne and Amaris – was in 9th grade at MCA academy. 
Teacher: Alyse Aquino. 

Excerpt from the story
…….. Her aqua eye peaked through the brush she was crouching behind, her calf length hair in folds behind her. She breathed quietly and steadily, not giving any hint that she was there. She slowly notched an arrow and pulled back. The gears of her bow moving silently into place. She looked down the length of the arrow and held her breath, steadying her aim. With the relaxing of her fingers the arrow flew true and struck the doe in the chest. It made a noise of distress but Evadne made no move. The doe run as best it could and disappeared into the forest…..

…….. She heard a slight disturbance in the fallen leaves and turned to see a black wolf not ten feet away from her…. “You don’t need to be afraid of me.” Her eye widened and she took a step back. He stood and lifted one paw off the ground……..