Press Release

For Immediate Release

Contact:  Susan Coleman
Virginia Foundation for the Humanities
145 Ednam Drive Charlottesville, VA  22903
PH: 434-982-2983   FAX: 434-296-4714
Email:  spcoleman@virgnia.edu
http://www.virginiafoundation.org/bookcenter

Last Call for Student Writing Contest

National Winners To Receive Reading Promotion Grants for Their School or Community Library

The December 12 deadline for entries to the Virginia Foundation Center for the Book’s Letters About Literature contest is drawing near. For the competition, students in grades 4 through 12 are encouraged to think of a favorite book and write a personal letter to the author of that book. The Center will select the top letter writers in the state at each of the three competition levels: Level I for children in grades 4, 5, and 6; Level II for grades 7 and 8, and Level III, grades 9, 10, 11, and12. Three state winners will receive $50 cash, a $50 Target giftcard, and will be invited to appear at the Opening Ceremony of the March 17, 2010 Virginia Festival of the Book in Charlottesville. Winners will be announced in early March 2010. Guidelines, the required entry form, and a 35-page Teacher’s Guide are available at virginiafoundation.org/bookcenter.

State winners are entered automatically in the national competition. Judges for the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress will select six national winners and 12 national runners-up. National winners will receive a Target GiftCard of $500. In addition, they each will win for their school or community library a $10,000 Reading Promotion Grant, and runners-up will win a $1,000 Reading Promotion grant for their library.

Target Stores, along with its parent company Target Corporation (NYSE:TGT), gives back more than $2 million a week to its local communities through grants and special programs. Since opening its first store in 1962, Target has partnered with nonprofit organizations, guests and team members to help meet community needs. The Center for the Book in the Library of Congress was established in 1977 as a public-private partnership to use the resources of the Library of Congress to stimulate public interest in books and reading. For information about its activities and national reading promotion networks, visit www.loc.gov/cfbook.

Other activities of the Virginia Foundation Center for the Book (virginiafoundation.org/bookcenter) include the Virginia Festival of the Book, held each year in March; the Big Read in Virginia, this year featuring A Lesson Before Dying; the Virginia Arts of the Book Center, a working book arts studio; and the online Virginia Literary Calendar.

The Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, www.virginiafoundation.org, is a non-profit educational organization, created in 1974 to enhance the Commonwealth’s civic, cultural, and intellectual life. Its purpose is to bring the humanities fully into Virginia's public life, assisting individuals and communities in their efforts to understand the past, confront important issues in the present, and shape a promising future.

“Virginia Foundation for the Humanities -- Shaping our Common Story”