Story competition awards young talent On Thursday, in the Writers' Union in Zamalek, the awards for the first Youth Creativity Competition were distributed with the first winner receiving a LE 25,000 scholarship to help in the tuition fees of the university of their choice. This short story competition, which is co-funded by Kotob Arabia, AK comics and Filbalad.com, is for high school students. "We chose this age range because of our strong belief in the importance of supporting the new generation which definitely has a great potential and will be able to offer society a lot in the future, says May Al Husseini from Filbalad. After advertising about the competition online, in the AK Comics and through special creative writing sessions that were held in some schools many students applied and 10 were announced the winners. Out of these 10, Osama Mohammad Abdullah was declared the winner of the Peoples' Choice Award for his story Loqmat Aish. This award is given to the story with the highest online votes. On the other hand, three students received the Youth Writing Award that is given through a judges' panel composed of writers from Kotob Arabia. The third prize was handed to Menat Allah Hussein for her story Saginat Al Qamar (The Moon's Captive). In the second place came Omanious Albert for his story Ashraqat Shams Al Maghib (The Setting Sun Has Shined) and Amr Ezz Al-Arab came first place was for his Al Ayam Al Sawdaa (The Black Days). Al Husseini believes that one of the most important roles the competition has played is that it encouraged people, specially the younger generations, to use their native language, Arabic, to express themselves. "Arabic is being ignored nowadays. Many youth and even grown ups have, unfortunately, become unable to even write without making spelling mistakes. So our role as an institution that is concerned with Arabic content online is to raise the interest of the youth in their language and to tell them that there are people who will listen to them if they express themselves in Arabic, says Al Husseini. According to Ramy Habeeb, the managing director of Kotob Arabia, the idea behind holding this competition came to him after realizing that since people in Egypt don't make money from writing, a fact that he is hoping to change, the ones who wrote did so out of a love for it and so should be encouraged. "Since the people who will write tomorrow are in high school today we thought why not give them a chance to show them that writing is not a dead-end field, that they can do something with their writing, explains Habeeb. Menat Allah Hussein, who came in third for her fairytale short story Saginat Al Qamar (The Moon's Captive), learned about the competition from one of her younger sister's AK Comics and decided to join. "I always wanted to write and participate in a competition but I couldn't find any, so when I read about the Youth Creativity Competition I decided to participate right away and, God willing, I'll participate next year, she says. The winner of the second prize, Omanious Albert, who also came second in last year's national chess competition, as his father proudly states, wrote his short story after the death of his grandfather with whom he had a very close bond. "I loved my grandfather a lot and he used to encourage me to write so when he died around the same time that the competition was announced I decided to participate with a story about his death, explains Albert. Amr Mohammad Ezz Al-Arab's short story Al Ayam Al Sawdaa (The Black Days) was by far the best work and was hailed by one of the critics as politically symbolic and insightful. The story describes a shepherd who forges an alliance with the wolves against his sheep in order to save himself. The 17-year-old Ezz Al-Arab of Om Khenan public school read about the competition on the Kotob Arabia Web site. Being talented and having had already written several short stories, though none of them were published, he decided to join. "The current events taking place around us in the world have inspired me with the theme of my story, says Ezz Al-Arab, adding, "and with my family's support I was able to write it and participate in the competition. The 10 short stories will be published online, on the Kotob Arabia Web site, for free and, according to Marawan Al Nashaar, the managing director of AK Comics, will later be printed in a book form by AK Comics so as to be available for the coming Children's Book Fair in November.
