Steve Lynn

Writing the State: Winning Entries from the First Annual South Carolina High School Writing Contest - Young Palmetto Books Steve Lynn

Publisher Marketing: "How should we improve the state of South Carolina?" That invitingly open-ended question served as the basis for the first annual South Carolina High School Writing Contest as the call went out in fall 2013 to juniors and seniors across the Palmetto State, encouraging them to take a stance through good, thought-provoking writing. The nearly five hundred responses that resulted were as impressive in quality as they were in quantity. Young writers sounded off on issues of race relations, environmental conservation, economic imbalance, opportunities of infrastructure, substance and physical abuse, and the maladies of education. Most wrote on issues of education rooted in their own burgeoning awareness of its gifts and limitations in their lives. From that pool of contestants, twenty-three finalists rose to the top to have their initial entries and subsequent writing on a favorite book or place judged by best-selling author Pat Conroy. The insightful and often revelatory responses from those finalists--including the first, second, and third place winners by grade--are collected here in Writing South Carolina. In heartfelt essays, poems, short stories, and drama, these diverse writers lay bare their attitudes and impressions of South Carolina as they have experienced it and as they hope to reshape it. The resulting anthology is a compelling portrait of the Palmetto State's potential as advocated by some of its best and brightest young writers. Editor Steven Lynn provides an introduction and contest judge Pat Conroy provides a foreword to the collection.

Contributor Bio:  Lynn, Steve Steve Lynn is the dean of the University of South Carolina Honors College and a Louise Fry Scudder Professor of English. Contributor Bio:  Rogers, Aida Aida Rogers is a writer and editor whose feature journalism has won national and regional awards. She has worked in newspapers, television, and magazines. Rogers is the editor of State of the Heart: South Carolina Writers on the Places They Love, coeditor of Writing South Carolina: Selections from the First Annual High School Writing Contest, and coauthor of Stop Where the Parking Lot's Full, a guide to some of South Carolina's most beloved restaurants. She holds a B. A. degree in journalism from the University of South Carolina and lives in Columbia. Contributor Bio:  Conroy, Pat A 2009 inductee in the South Carolina Hall of Fame, Pat Conroy is the author of five novels and a total of ten previous books, most recently The Death of Santini. Two of his novels, The Great Santini and The Prince of Tides, were made into Oscar-nominated films.