The Houston Livestock
Show and Rodeo™ Trailblazer Committee is proud to announce the winners of its 2023
Writing Competition.
Texas-area fourth graders were invited to submit either a poem or an essay,
following the theme, “If I Had a Pony.”
Each entry was judged
by committee volunteers in two blind rounds on the following criteria: Ideas, Organization, Voice, Sentence Fluency,
Conventions, and Presentation.
Following the committee
judging, the top entries were judged by a panel of “celebrity” judges,
including Zane Carruth, a children’s author from Houston, Mary Brooke Casad, a
featured Texas writer at the Texas Book Festival in Austin, TX, Vanessa Gilmore,
published author and the youngest ever appointee to a federal judgeship at 36
years old, Chris Mullen, a Western author from Richmond TX, and Cathey Nickell,
a children’s book author and speaker from Houston, TX.
Thank you to our
judges, volunteers and especially our Texas student authors on a job well done!