For thirty-nine (39) years the HOward COunty POetry and LITerature SOciety (HoCoPoLitSo) has awarded book prizes to honor students nominated by their teachers for Promise and Achievement in Language Arts. To foster lifelong reading habits and a love of literature, HoCoPoLitSo presents book awards with personalized bookplates. The tradition continued this year with modifications. Instead of HoCoPoLitSo board members making presentations at Howard County public high school honors assemblies for graduating seniors, books were delivered to students’ schools or mailed directly to students with the assistance of board members Susan Thornton Hobby and Anne Reis (Homewood Media Specialist), and Howard County Public School System’s Secondary Language Arts Coordinator, Nancy Czarnecki.

Twenty-eight students were chosen by their English Departments to receive HoCoPoLitSo’s Promise and Achievement Award in Language Arts.  The honorees were: Victoria Adler, Cameron Goodwin-Schoen (Atholton), Helen Pantoulis, Tobias Moser (Centennial) Kaitlyn Walker, Harrison Young (Glenelg), Rose Kinder, Christopher Parris, Jr. (Hammond), Dré Campbell, Gale Freeman (Homewood Center), Emily Gorny, Richard Zhou (Howard),  Autumn Salcedo, Andrew Vesey (Long Reach), Audrey Casper, Jiwoo Moon (Marriotts Ridge), Ian Roe, Douglas Stewart (Mt. Hebron), Mikhi Kelly, Maheshwari Shukla, Genesis Houston, Kiana Macharia, (tie) (Oakland Mills), Esha Bhatti, Melissa Rayo (Reservoir), Tess Redman, Chutian Weng (River Hill), Ananya Chand, and Aden Noyes (Wilde Lake).

Supported by a generous donation by Dr. Lillian Bauder, students received books by such outstanding poets and writers as: Maya Angelou, Carrie Brown, Michael Dirda, Lauren Groff, Joy Harjo, Colum McCann, Alice McDermott, Randy Pausch, Stanley Plumly, Jason Reynolds and Ocean Vuong. Students were also invited to view the authors who have visited Howard County talking about their work at www.youtube.com/hocopolitso.

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