GRASSHOPPER: Where the Student(s) Become the Teacher!

Ok, so in the past few posts, I've let you know about  a few of my students who have had works published that had some kind of connection with works I've published. But today, let me tell you about two other writers I was lucky enough to teach this year--and they've done something I haven't been able to do...

The Vancouver Readers and Writers Festival is HUGE--plenty of big name authors converge on Granville Island each year, and for a week, the place is filled with readers and writers. Their writing contests are also prestigious and highly competitive. While I was shortlisted in the poetry category for adults two years ago, I have never won. But this year, two of my students won their age groups. Grade 11 student, ROBIN GEORGE, won for her story, "A Child's World," and Grade 12 student, SALLY ARANG, won for her story, "The Boa Bandit."  Sally also won the overall youth award. Three first prizes, in one class--I was proud and jealous at the same time. In any case, here's a photo of them and the younger winners. Sally is on the extreme right, and Robin is next to her, wearing the purplish pink checked coat:

The author they're with is Sarah Leavitt, a writer they got to spend a day with in a workshop, working with their own writing, as part of the prize. I'd call them lucky, but I KNOW the hard work that went into the pieces that won it for them...! Here's a link to the page:

YOUTHWRITES WINNERS

THE VALUE OF SPINOFFS

Ok, yesterday, you learned how a headline led to hundreds of articles and article ideas, thousands of dollars, and even mystical connections with writing from one of my success story students. But that article did much more for me than that--it also gave me my first bit of fan mail, which appeared in a December 2004 issue of Writer's Digest, and it caught the eye of the editor of a sister publication of theirs whose editor offered to reprint my article in Writer's Guide to Creativity...also put out by Writer's Digest. It was my first experience with reprint rights (second rights), but pleasurable nonetheless. Those two articles caught the eye of the editor of a book called Writer Profits: How I Got the Gig, and I was paid to write a 5000-word chapter for that book. You just never know where a few words (like a headline) might take you!