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After waiting nearly all summer for the results, I recently learned that Mariah Martinez, eighth-grader at Christ the King Catholic School earned first place in both a local and national writing contest sponsored by Catholic Daughters of America.

A Christ the King student won a national writing contest through Catholic Daughters of the Americas.

Four of the state level winners were also from the area.

Members of the local court presented Martinez with an award and check last week. Martinez entered “The Big Picture,” an original poem into the contest pertaining to the themes “God’s Gifts in my Life” and “The Gifts I Give to Others.”

Here’s the winning entry:

The Big Picture
Pencil to paper.  /// A swooping arch of lead. /// Imagination becomes reality.  /// Lines connecting, intersecting, /// To form something bigger.
The rush of knowing you’ve created something new.
The life of an artist.
This is God’s gift in my life.

Fourth through eighth-graders participated in the contest. Thousands competed nationally.

In other student writing news, 64 students from Our Lady of Perpetual Help School in Scottsdale will be published writers come January. Their poems — on a variety of topics — will be compiled into the Pine Tree Poetry 2009 collection.