Louisiana Letters About Literature winners announced

The Louisiana Center for the Book in the State Library of Louisiana announced the 2019 Louisiana winners of the annual Letters About Literature contest. This year, 242 fourth- through 12th-grade Louisiana students wrote personal letters to authors, living or dead, to explain how their work changed the students’ way of thinking about the world or themselves. The winners of the competition represent cities from Ruston to New Orleans and were inspired by works ranging from fiction to nonfiction, science fiction to realism, and including books by a former president and a Nobel Peace Prize recipient.

Winning students receive $100 for first place, $75 for second place and $50 for third place, and they will be recognized at the Louisiana Book Festival on Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019, in Baton Rouge, with the first-place winners reading their letters there. Louisiana’s first-place winners’ entries have been submitted to the Library of Congress for the national competition.

The winners of Louisiana’s 2018-2019 Letters About Literature contest are: 

Level I (grades 4 – 6) 

1st Place: Annika Roberson, Trinity Episcopal School, New Orleans

2nd Place: Kelon George, Prairie Elementary School, Lafayette

Level II (grades 7 – 8) 

1st Place: Phoenix Chapital, Lusher Charter School, New Orleans

2nd Place: Magnolia Charlet, Northwestern Middle School, Zachary

3rd Place: Lauren Poole, Winfield Middle School, Winnfield

Honorable Mention: Rain Monroe, Lusher Charter School, New Orleans

Level III (grades 9 – 12) 

1st Place: Donovan Turpin, Cedar Creek School, Ruston

2nd Place: Marie Foret, Ursuline Academy, New Orleans

3rd Place: Lauren Shirley, Cedar Creek School, Ruston

Honorable Mention: Zachary Nichols, St. Paul’s School, Covington

To read the winners’ letters and see the names of all the state finalists and their teachers and schools, visit www.state.lib.la.us. 
For a direct link to winning letters and complete list of finalists, click here: 

The 2018-2019 Letters About Literature contest for young readers is made possible by a generous grant from the Dollar General Literacy Foundation, with additional support from gifts to the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress, which promotes the contest through its affiliate Centers for the Book, state libraries and other organizations. Funding for prizes is provided by the grant.