Clark County high school students in grades 9 – 12 are invited to submit original poems for the Vegas Valley Book Festival 2016 Spark! Poetry Writing & Recitation Competition by Sept. 30. Modeled after the national Poetry Out Loud competition and the Scholastic Writing competition, high school students will have the opportunity to recite their own poetry during the Vegas Valley Book Festival Saturday, Oct. 15. The first-place prize is $300. The second-place winner will receive $200 and the third-place prize is $100.
Students will be asked to present three original poems to be judged by a panel consisting of poets, authors, educators and other community members. Panelists will use scoring guidelines to assign numerical values to the evaluation criteria.
There will be three presentation rounds in a tent at the Historic Fifth Street School, 401 S. Fourth St., from 1 to 2:30 p.m. Oct. 15. Students who registered for Spark! between now and Sept. 30 will be eligible to present one poem in the first round. The top six students will present a second poem in the second round. The top three students will present a third poem in the third round to determine first, second and third place. Scores will be cumulative. Student poets must present the poems they submitted on their registration form.
This program is supported by public funding for the arts through the Nevada Arts Council, a division of the Nevada Department of Tourism and Cultural Affairs, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Vegas Valley Book Festival, Nevada Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities. For competition details, guidelines, and a registration form, go online to http://www.VegasValleyBookFestival.org/spark/. For further information, contact Arts Learning Coordinator Maryjane Dorofachuk, Nevada Arts Council, at 702-486-3738 or mdorofachuk@nevadaculture.org.
About the Vegas Valley Book Festival
This uniquely Las Vegas event is produced through a collaboration of local public sector and nonprofit partners who work each year to enrich and expand the city’s cultural life by hosting great writers, thinkers and imagineers.
Now in its 15th year, the Vegas Valley Book Festival is free and open to the public, thanks to support from its producing partners: city of Las Vegas; Las Vegas-Clark County Library District; Las Vegas-Clark County Library District Foundation, Inc.; the Las Vegas Chapter of AIGA, the professional organization for design; the Las Vegas Review-Journal; Nevada Humanities; the Beverly Rogers, Carol C. Harter Black Mountain Institute at UNLV; and Vegas PBS.
A hotel room reservation block is available for festival goers at the Las Vegas Golden Nugget Hotel now through mid-September. Volunteers also are needed for the festival; an application form is required. For information on hotel reservations, volunteering, author appearances, and much more, please go online to VegasValleyBookFestival.org/. Keep up with festival news on Twitter #VVBF, Facebook, Google+, and Pinterest, or call 702-229-5902 with questions.
Las Vegas-Clark County Library District News 