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Student Wins British Writing Prize

A physically disabled 10 year old student in Houston is being awarded first prize in a significant literary competition in London, England.  At the prize-giving ceremony on Saturday March 29th, Jemma Leech will be announced as the winner of the Under-16 section of the Write Up Your Street competition, and part of her prize will benefit other Houston schoolchildren.Jemma Leech 

Because she is severely physically disabled with cerebral palsy, Jemma uses a computerised keyboard to communicate, but she has already been hailed as a gifted writer and poet.   In this competition, she beat more than 1,600 other children to the Under 16s first prize, even though she was among the youngest to enter. Jemma’s entry was an evocative description of a wet Christmas Day in Brockwell Park, near her former home in South London. 

Jemma, who lives in Braes Heights, has won a prize of around $800 in book gift certificates for herself, and another $800 of gift certificates for her school from London’s famous Foyles bookshop.  She has asked the organisers to split the school’s prize between her current school, Mark Twain Elementary, and Palmerston Primary, in the town of Barry, South Wales, where she was a student before moving to Houston last year with her family.

One of the judges said of Jemma’s work:  ‘Jemma Leech's winning entry, "A Hawarden Grove Christmas" stunned us all with its imagery, craft, and finesse. The fact that Jemma is just 10 years old makes her talent burn even more brightly.  It is the one entry which inspired a unanimous decision - WINNER! We are all confident that Jemma has a successful career as a writer ahead of her.’

The competition was organised by development agency, Spread the Word, to create a literary map of London, and entries had to include the name of a London street in the title.  All the entries will be posted on a new website, www.cityofsharedstories.org.uk, and visitors to the site will be able to tour a map of this famous city and read the entries by clicking on certain streets and landmarks.

Jemma Leech and Pansy GeeAlthough Jemma will not be able to attend the ceremony on Saturday in person, a short film will be shown in which she gives her acceptance speech.  It shows her sitting alongside the lifelike statue of Mark Twain in front of the school.  In the film, Jemma pays tribute to Mrs Pansy Gee, the Head of the Literature Development Centre at Mark Twain Elementary, Houston’s only literature magnet school. 

In the speech, she says: ‘Mrs Pansy Gee is an inspiration.  As the Literature Centre Director here, she spends hours of every day showing her students the joys, thrills and sometimes pains of reading and writing literature of every sort – stories, poetry, non-fiction and plays.  She has taught me – here at school and last summer at writing camp when she was my tutor – to let my readers see what I see, and feel what I feel - visions from my eyes and imagination, and feelings from my heart and soul.’

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