Press Release: Winners Announced — 2024 Annual Wapsie Writing Contest, May 22, 2024
Contest Rules:
The contest aims to encourage children, youth, and adults to write more and improve their skills. The ability to convey ideas through narrative and writing is a fundamental skill in so many fields – even in this new era of ChatGPT and artificial intelligence, the reason behind the contest which began in 2023. Adults (19 and older), youth (12-18 years), and children (11 years and younger) are invited to write about a subject matter of their choosing in short stories, fiction and non-fiction, or poetry. The length must be 100 to 1,500 words, and participants are limited to one entry. Submissions are accepted annually after January 1; the deadline for entry is midnight, March 15. The winners are judged to have poems and stories that are the most creative and original and demonstrate a quality of beauty and intensity of emotion for their age category.
2023 Wapsie Writing Contest Winners: City Newspaper (fairbank-ia.org), May 2023
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Keynote Speaker
I welcome the opportunity to speak about customized topics, as well as my historical crime fiction novels/novelas, memoirs, and poetry.
(Below) I likened my experience to Watch Sunday Morning: NPR’s Ari Shapiro on journalism and cabaret – Full show on CBS.
Writing Workshops
“Writing a Memoir” (90 mins.): Whether you wish to write a memoir of under 10 pages —or 400 pages, like mine, We Are Eight, a Memoriam (2015), your family will treasure it just as much. Instruction (with handout) includes: Research, Interviews, Personal Stories, Genealogy, Photos, Permissions — and more.
Outcome: Attendees are provided with instruction/handout which includes: Research, Interviews, Personal Stories, Genealogy, Photos, Permissions — and more, everything to create their own personal memoir.
Journaling (90 mins.): I kept a journal for over twenty years. I’ll talk about how keeping a journal was great training for my career as an author, and writing articles, short stories, poetry, etc.
Outcome: Students are provided with journals and taught how to record their life stories through writing, drawing, photos, and mapping.
© 2019 Betty Brandt Passick. All rights reserved.