Our Little Author

Well, Izzy has fulfilled one of her lifelong aspirations...already, she will officially be a published author this Fall, 2009!! In March we received a paper from school promoting a poetry and short-story writing contest that was for young Canadian authors aged 7-16 (I believe). I tucked the paper away in my file and found it the day before the entries were due! So Izzy worked hard at typing some of her short stories onto the computer and we quickly realized that none of her stories were short enough to be entered in the contest. However, after ruthlessly cutting down her story "If Eggs Had Legs" we were finally able to get it to the required 360 word maximum length and we sent it to school to be faxed away to BC.

Then, last Friday, we received an envelope from the Poetry Institute of Canada addressed to Izzy. Joel and I were dying to open it, but waited until after school and took the letter along to the bus stop to get Izzy (it was so great that Joel was along that day, he is rarely ever home to pick up the kids with me). She tore the envelope open and I started to read...until I was almost screaming with excitement as I read that her story had been chosen (among thousands received!) to be published in an anthology that will be coming out in the Fall of 2009! She also moves forward in the competition and has a chance to win first, second or third prize, or the prize for the best work from our region. Our little Izzy...a published author...we were so absolutely thrilled!!!

Now if we could just get a hold of Alice Munro (who literally lives only streets away from us), wouldn't that be a great picture: the two famous short-story authors from Clinton ;)

Proud Mama,
Mel