Photo – left to right: Young authors Chelsea Bannatyne and Marik Beraki
Chelsea Bannatyne penned a science fiction story called Almost Trapped. Marik Beraki focused on one of his passions, basketball, with a story called My First NBA Playoff Game. Both 14 year-old, Grade 9 students at UWinnipeg’s Model School never expected their stories would win out over thousands of others for publication. The students have been selected as finalists in the national Polar Expressions Publishing Annual Student Writing Contest. This is Polar Expressions 6th annual student writing contest which receives thousands of entries from students and teachers across the country.
Chelsea and Marik’s stories will be published in the Polar Expressions 2012 Student Anthology and they also will advance to the final round of competition held in June.
“I am very excited, it feels unreal,” said Chelsea, who hopes one day to study law or medicine. “My story is about a boy who travels back to the Jurassic period in a time machine, and almost does not make it back.”
Marik, originally from Eritrea, has been in Winnipeg for six years. “I love sports so I wrote about a person who gets injured playing basketball and tries to make a comeback. I never expected to even come close to being published. It is pretty exciting.”
Chelsea and Marik are two of the Model School’s CN Scholars. In June 2011, CN made a significant and generous gift to UWinnipeg by committing $750,000 to the future of education, community and economic development. This allowed for creation of the CN Model School Bursaries, helping students like Chelsea and Marik to achieve their dreams.
BACKGROUND
UWinnipeg’s Model School
The Model School Program is located in The University of Winnipeg Collegiate, dedicated to students from grade 9-12 who are identified as being bright and capable of university entrance, but have various barriers that prevent them from reaching their potential. The students come from a variety of local inner-city high schools as well as being nominated by non-profit organizations. our goal to provide the opportunity and supports needed to assist the young people to achieve academic success. Gerri Zacharias offers untiring encouragement as the Model School facilitator.
Polar Expressions Publishing
Polar Expressions Publishing Is a small Canadian publisher dedicated to the task of creating books showcasing the very best poems and short stories written by Canadians of varying backgrounds, ages, and occupations. By not charging entry fees Polar makes its contests available to everyone, regardless of financial ability, and by publishing only the top entries it gives all a fair chance to get published and see how their work compares to their peers.
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MEDIA CONTACT
Diane Poulin, Communications Officer, The University of Winnipeg
P: 204.988.7135, E: d.poulin@uwinnipeg.ca
