Every November, the National Novel Writing Month Young Writers Project Challenge: to write an entire draft of an original novel in 30 days! once again this year, every middle schooler succeeded! This year, the students combined their efforts and produced an impressive 785,836 words!

After a few weeks of editing and rewrites, each submission was evaluated by Mrs. Mancini and Ms. Fischer according to the NaNoWriMo YWP rubric. The winners of the challenge were announced, and they are:

6th Grade: Eva Tarrant and James Moorhead

7th Grade: Savannah Nelson and Hannah Schold

8th Grade: Tiegan Lambert and Zade Royce

Honorable Mentions: Will Cunningham and Owen Mancini

NaNoWriMo is a nonprofit organization that provides tools, structure, community, and encouragement to help people find their voices, achieve creative goals, and build new worlds — on and off the page. The organization began in 1999 as a daunting challenge to write 50,000 words of a novel in thirty days. Since then, it has grown into a global phenomenon where hundreds of thousands of people around the world begin to write on November 1st, determined to end the month with a first draft. They enter the challenge as elementary school teachers, mechanics, or stay-at-home parents, and they leave as novelists.

NaNoWriMo is a unique and community-powered event, with hosted authors who have drafted novels like Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants, Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus, Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl, and Marissa Meyer’s Cinder. In 2006, NaNoWriMo officially became a nonprofit organization, and their programs now support creativity and writing education year-round.