Literary Contest 2018

I got so excited to get to experience this contest because I have never been to one where you get to get compete with poetry, essays, mini saga and short stories. Also because my friend Isabel won second place in the category of essay and Angela who won first place in the same category. So this whole thing was new to me and I wanted to see how it was organized, how it worked, see just about everything. I arrived at the Amphitheater No. 3 and it surprised me that there was food. It’s so obvious that I tasted everything in that table because food is amazing. When Alondra, Francellys and I ate just about everything, we entered the amphitheater cause the contest was about to start.

I listened to all the welcome and opening remarks but I really loved the speech by Elidio La Torres Lagares, who was the special guest speaker. I am not someone who loves to write because I find very difficult to organize my ideas and thoughts into words. He motivated me to not use this as an excuse seeing that I have the duty to tell my own story. To never stay silence no matter what. “We are made of tales, pigments of imagination”. We, humans, wouldn’t be anything without the ability express our own story. I want to stop being so insecure about my writing and just embrace it, so that one day I could be standing on that stage.

The first category presented by the Awards Ceremony was the “Mini Saga”. I didn’t know anything about this so I had to google it. “A mini saga is a piece of writing which has exactly fifty words” (One Stop English). I got amazed by how much you can say whit a small quantity of words. The first place was “Missing Place” by Lesmalee Gonzalez Esquilin; second place, “Clinging to Life” by Sonia I. Neris Alicea and third place, “Sixty Nine Bucks” by Jeaneishka Ruiz Vazquez. They were all really good but the next category really stuck to my heart. This is because it was poetry and Sheila M. Figueroa Suarez for her work of “A Challenge”. It was such a beautiful and moving poem and I was glad that she won third place. Finally, the next category was “essays”. Alondra and I immediately started to get ready by grabbing our phones to take a lot of pictures and to, well, scream our hearts out. So as they were saying the names and all that, I got really nervous and excited that I couldn’t take it anymore. Then they said “Isabel M. Bravo Carretero for Proud to be Puerto Rican” and all us began screaming so much that I’m pretty sure that we embarrassed Isabel but sorry not sorry.  We screamed and cheered again for Angela because she won first place for her essay of “About Home”. Both of this amazing essays were about how “home” can be different for each of us but that no matter where they are Puerto Rico will always be their home. My favorite thing is that they both finished their essays with “Yo seria borincano aunque naciera en la luna”.