Kirsten Snyder, a senior at THS, recently won a national essay writing competition. Kirsten’s interest in the competition was encouraged by Mrs. Kowalski who, when she read one of Kirstens essays thought it had a lot of potential. Ms. Kowalski convinced Kirsten to submit the essay into the National competition. Her essay was an analysis of character interaction in the book “Everything I Never Told You” by Celeste Ng. The competition began in early February and the results came out in march.

When the results of the common reader competition counties came out kirsten saw she had won first place. The prize for winning county competitions won kirsten $250 and also qualified her for nationals where she submitted the same essay. When the results for nationals came out in April Kirsten had also wont first. Winning nationals had a prize of $2000!

Kirsten has loved to write since she was very young and this competition gave her a chance to showcase her talent. Kirsten has also won the Rotary competition, which was a speech competition. Kirsten wrote about a big controversial topic, which won Kirsten $300. She is planning on entering the Ayn Rand competition where she will have to read either Atlas Shrugged or Anthem. If Kirsten wins this competition she can win up to $2,500. Kirsten hopes that there will be more opportunities for her to explore her love of, and talent for, creative and critical writing.