Awards and Contests

Special certificates, gift certificates, savings bonds, T-shirts, books, dictionaries, and money are given as prizes for Festival competitions. All prizes are awarded at a ceremony in Kilcawley Center from 3:15–3:45 p.m. on each day of the Festival. Prize winners will come on to the stage to receive their awards and the congratulations of the author-lecturer, the visiting lecturer, Board members, and Committee members. The prize-winning Candace Gay Memorial Awards, the prize-winning Impromptu Writing essays, Journalism Workshop articles, and the Barbara Brothers Writing Award for Teachers are printed in A Festival of Writing, a copy of which is provided to each participating school the following fall.

Judging of all Festival competitions, except the Candace Gay Memorial Essay Contest and the Barbara Brothers Writing Award for Teachers, is done by members of the YSU English Department, area teachers, substitutes, librarians, administrators, retired teachers, and qualified parents. The Candace Gay Memorial Essay Contest is judged by the Festival Committee itself, the Barbara Brothers competition by a specially selected committee.

Before the Festival, judges read the Festival books for the grade level they will be judging and participate in a training session at YSU on holistic and trait analysisscoring methods, systems of assessment perfected and used for numerous state andnational writing tests. At the Festival, judges first evaluate papers holistically. The best papers are re-read, using trait scoring methods, and evaluated according to ideas, style, mechanics, and use of specific evidence from the books. Papers with the highest scores are declared the winners.

Candace Gay Memorial Essay Contest

Candace Gay Memorial Awards, established in 1978 by Professors Thomas and Carol Gay in memory of their thirteen-year-old daughter, Candace McIntyre Gay, are given to junior and senior high school students who exhibit distinctive writing ability in the Candace Gay Memorial Essay Contest. More than $2,500 in prizes is distributed each year in the Candace Gay Memorial Essay Contest.

Candace Gay Prompt: Families come in many varieties.  Discuss the ways families are important in at least two of this year’s Festival books.

Your entry will be judged by how well you:

• Establish a purpose for your entry
  
• Organize and develop your ideas.
  
• Support your discussion with accurate and appropriate details from the books
• Use language, including conventional grammar and spelling.
  

Your entry will not be considered unless you

• Submit only one paper.
• Type or print your paper, double-spaced on unlined white paper, or handwrite your paper in ink on only one side of lined 8 1/2  x 11" white paper.
• Leave 1" margins on all sides, and number the pages.
• Write your paper with no help from your teacher, parents, or anyone else. Use only your own ideas about the books, and put those ideas in your own words.
• Enclose all direct quotations in quotation marks and cite page numbers in your text for those quotations.
• Limit your entry to 750-1000 words. (Papers that are significantly shorter or longer are disqualified).
• Create a title page that includes the following informtion - (Do not provide any of this information anywhere else in your essay):
• The title of your entry
• Your name (no nicknames or shortened forms of first names, please)
• Your full address
• Your age and grade
• Your teacher’s first and last name
• Your principal’s first and last name
• The full name of your school

At the bottom of the title page, write the following statement and sign your name beneath it:

I have received no direct help on this paper from my teachers, parents, or anyone else.

Below the statement printed above on your title page write the following statement and have your teacher sign his/her name beneath that:

This essay was not written as a class assignment, and I have not directly helped the student with this essay in any way.

Postmark your entry by February 2, 2009 and address it as follows:

Melanie Loew
The Candace Gay Memorial Essay Contest
Department of English
Youngstown State University
One University Plaza
Youngstown, OH  44555

Festival Art Contest

All students at schools eligible for the 2008 English Festival are invited to enter the Festival Art Contest by submitting two-dimensional artwork. Each entry must be an illustration suitable for the cover of a Festival book and must be the student’s original work. Artwork may be in any medium and in any style. Entries will be judged on their originality, artistic merit, and appropriateness to the book being illustrated. Entries should be vertical in format and should contain the author and the title of the book, either on the artwork or on an overlay. Entries cannot be copied from other artwork or photographs unless the photograph is one taken by the student (please tape to back of entry).

Every entry must be accompanied by a cover sheet attached to the back of the submission that indicates the student’s name, grade, school, English teacher, and the book or poems being illustrated. Students may submit more than one entry, but no student may win more than one prize. Multiple prizes will be awarded for 7th–9th and for 10th–12th. Winning entries will be displayed on the YSU campus during the week of the English Festival, after which they may be picked up. All other entries may be picked up after 2:00 p.m. each day of the Festival. We reserve the right to copy art work for display on our web page or in our publications, with credit to the artist.

Send entries and cover sheets by February 1, 2008, to:

Rick Williams
YSU English Festival Art Contest
English Department
Youngstown State University
One University Plaza
Youngstown, Ohio 44555

Jeremy Salvner Memorial Music Award

The Jeremy Salvner Memorial Music Awards, established by Gary, Kathy, and Matthew Salvner in memory of their late son and brother Jeremy, are awarded to junior and senior high students attending the English Festival for original musical compositions inspired by one or more books on the English Festival list. Original musical compositions may be submitted by individuals or by groups of no more than five (who will then share in any prize awarded to the group). Compositions may be either vocal or instrumental and must be no more than ten minutes long. Vocal compositions must be recorded (accompanied by any instrumentation) and submitted on CD, and should be accompanied by written lyrics of the composition. Instrumental compositions must be recorded using solo or ensemble instruments (any instruments are allowed) and submitted on CD.

All entries must be titled, and each submitted CD must be labeled with the musical work’s title, names of book(s) that inspired the work, and the names, grades, and schools of composers/performers written onto the CD. Each entry must also be accompanied by a statement of no more than 250 words that explains how the composition is inspired by (or reflective of) characters, settings, events, situations, themes, and/or moods of a particular book or books on this year’s English Festival reading list. This statement must also contain the title of the work and names, grades, and schools of composers/performers. Entries will be judged by a committee of YSU Dana School of Music faculty, other music professionals, and at least one member of the English Festival Committee. Separate prizes are given at the junior-high and senior-high levels.

Entries will be judged according to the following criteria:

• Musicality of the composition
• Originality of the composition
• Effectiveness of the lyrics (in the case of vocal compositions)
• Effectiveness in capturing events, situations, characters, themes, or moods in a Festival book or books.

Entries to the Jeremy Salvner Memorial Music Awards may not be returned. We reserve the right to use excerpts of winning compositions on our website and in other English Festival publicity, with credit given to the artists.

Send musical entries and accompanying essays by February 1, 2008, to:

Rick Williams
Jeremy Salvner Memorial Music Awards
English Department
Youngstown State University
One University Plaza
Youngstown, OH 44555

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