Young Pegasus Poetry Competition   Tags: competition, kids, poetry, teens, young_pegasus  

For more than 80 years, the San Antonio Public Library has celebrated the talents of the city’s young writers with the Young Pegasus Poetry Competition.

Open to poets 18 and under, the Young Pegasus Poetry Competition was begun in 1927 to celebrate Book Week (now called National Children’s Book Week) in a new way. Poets are invited to submit their work, which is then reviewed by a panel of independent judges.

The judges do not select a set number of winners. Instead, any poem submitted that is deemed worthy of publication is printed in the Young Pegasus Anthology.

Selected poets are invited to attend an awards ceremony in the spring where they receive an award certificate and a copy of the year's anthology in which their work appears.

The selected poems are read aloud during the ceremony, either by the poets themselves or a member of the judging panel.

For additional information on the Young Pegasus Competition, please contact:

Viki Ash, Children's Services Coordinator
San Antonio Public Library
210-207-2620
viki.ash@sanantonio.gov

A panel of seven judges will read, discuss and debate all the poems that are submitted to the competition.  As they perform their duties, the judges have no information that identifies the poets.  Their decisions are made solely on the quality of the poems themselves.

The judges do not have a predetermined number of poems that will be selected.  Any poem they deem "worthy of publication"  will be included in the 2012 Young Pegasus Anthology. 

Members of the 2012 Judging Panel are:

• Jay Brandon, Author and Attorney
• Fernando Flores, Teacher and Poet
• Jane Foct-Hansen, Poet and Professor, San Antonio College
• Xelena Gonzalez, Freelance Writer and Arts Educator
• Laurie Ann Guerrero, Poet, Creative Writing Instructor and Interim Director of the Writing Center, Palo Alto College 
• Nicole Provencher, Teacher and Poet
• James Rossignol, Poet and Professor, San Antonio College

Enter your poem online.

Poems accepted through December 15, 2011.

• September 15 through December 15, 2011:  Young Poets can submit their work online or in hard copy at any branch library or via surface mail to the Central Library, 600 Soledad, San Antonio, TX  78205   ATTN: Young Pegasus.
• December 19, 2011 through January 5, 2012:  Poetry Packets (arranged by age group) prepared and delivered to the judges.
• January 26 through March 8, 2012:  Judges read, discuss and debate submitted poems.
• March 12, 2012:  Judges complete their work, submit list of selected poems to the library.
• March 13 through March 16, 2012:  All selected poems screened for plagarism. 
• March 16 through March 31, 2012:  Letters sent to selected poets along with publishing release form and printer's proof showing how the poem will appear in the 2012 Young Pegasus Anthology.
• April 2012:  Final camera-ready copy of the Anthology prepared for printing and binding. 
• April 2012:  Thank you letters sent to poets who were not selected for publication. 
• April 2012:  Invitations to the Young Pegasus Awards Ceremony are mailed to winning poets, judges and local dignitaries.
• May 20, 2012:  Young Pegasus Awards Ceremony held at the Hermann Sons Lodge. (Tentative date and location)