Honors: Three ORHS students, resident win writing awards

Submitted

Three Oak Ridge High School students and longtime resident Wanda Ensor Grooms were honored in a writing contest held in conjunction with the Tennessee Mountain Writers annual conference in April. Contest winners in seven categories were announced and awards presented during the conference banquet.

In the Student Poetry category, Abby Douglas received first place recognition for “The Other Ten Percent,” and Emily Stansfield received third place for her poem, “The Enemy.” Douglas received second place in the Student Prose category for “Easier Than I Had Imagined.” Lucas Potter won third place in Student Prose for “Forever Friends.”

In the adult competition, Grooms received first place in the Poetry category for “Photo of the Unborn” and honorable mention for “Summer People.”

Grooms was also awarded third place in the Children’s Literature category for “Growing Ginny.”

The 26th annual conference featured principal workshop leaders Crystal Wilkinson, Fiction; Scott Huler, Nonfiction; Helen Hemphill, Writing for Young People; Joseph Bathanti, Poetry; and Kate Larken, Editing and Publishing. Wilkinson was also the banquet speaker. The conference was funded in part under an agreement with the Tennessee Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts.

The Tennessee Mountain Writers’ 27th annual conference is scheduled for April 9-11, 2015, at the DoubleTree Hotel in Oak Ridge.

Tennessee Mountain Writers, a member of the Oak Ridge Arts Council, is a nonprofit, non-political organization that promotes Tennessee literary arts and supports the work of Tennessee writers. Its goal is to provide opportunities for people interested in the craft of writing to become better writers. Membership is open to all writers interested in furthering these objectives, regardless of geographic location.