Van Buren County Teen Creative Writing Challenge 2018 in Bloomington, MN

This year's works strive to find richness across the spectrum of life's experiences. Our winning entries in fiction run the gamut from realistic fiction and humor to mystery, science fiction, and fantasy. We follow characters both ordinary and extraordinary: young detectives, ballerinas, orphans, students, witches, warriors, political prisoners, even personifications of Life and Death. Our winning poems explore everything from the bond between a girl and her horse and the importance of good sportsmanship to persistence in the face of mental illness and the inevitability of death. Opening the book with an ode to books themselves, we close with a story that warns us against giving up on the light and a poem that advises us to "embrace the dark." Balance is all, and isn't this the central lesson of emerging adulthood? The next generation is getting ready to take the world into their hands. We are proud to help tell their tale.