Two Carter students are being recognized with a  2nd place for their written submission, and a third student is being named the winner in the age 14-18 design category in the 2019 Youth Creative Writing and Bookmark Design Contest.

Sophomores, Janice Urive and Jennifer Vela both placed second in their respective categories. Janice placed in the poetry category while Jennifer Vela placed in prose.  Another sophomore,  Andrea Garcia, was announced the winner of the age 14-18 Bookmark Design Contest.

Organizers of the South Texas Book Festival express their gratitude to all participants and proudly announced winners on their website.

This year they focused on the subject of “The Spirit of South Texas.”

In an interview with Jennifer Vela, she states her overall feeling and opinion of the contest and its benefits.

“I felt surprised and proud of myself. I’ve always liked writing even though it is sometimes underappreciated and overlooked. However, I would encourage others to compete because it’s a great opportunity to practice if you want to become an author or a poemist,” says Jennifer.

“It’s a great opportunity to meet authors and just to have a nice experience there at the festival.”

Jennifer’s work, along with the rest of the winners, will be revealed on November 10th at the South Texas College Festival.

She deeply encourages Carter students to join her, Janice, and Andrea to view their winning work.

The general public will have an opportunity to meet other winners and get a copy of the anthology of their work and receive a bookmark at the South Texas Book Festival on Sunday, November 10th, at 4:00 pm.

Festivities for the festival will run from 12-7 p.m. on a Sunday, however, a kick-off event is scheduled for Saturday. The public can expect a diverse lineup of over twenty national, regional, and local authors, narrators, and illustrators.

The event’s website says, “This free community festival promotes literacy for children, teens, and their families and is the largest festival of its kind south of San Antonio.”

Marissa Llamas is currently a junior at Jimmy Carter Early College High School. She is in extracurricular activities such as UIL, The National Honor Society and the Texas Association of Future Educators. She has been doing UIL Academics ever since her freshman year and is currently in Mathematics and Number Sense. When she first joined UIL Math, she was shocked to see how she was the only freshman on the team. Last year as a sophomore, she went to the TMSCA competition for UIL Math in San Antonio. This year she was promoted as captain for her UIL Math Team. Her academic goals include to pass all her classes, to hopefully receive internships during the summer, and she plans to lead her Math team straight to regionals in San Antonio. She values how with a little determination, a touch of drive, and with true diligence anything is possible. 

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