Western Middle School essay winners announced, judged by Sally Bliumis-Dunn

The Young Writers Showcase is a partnership between the Greenwich Citizen and Town middle school teachers and students designed to strengthen writing skills. It features a competition in three different genres during the middle school year -- memoirs in November, essays in January and poetry in April.

Western Middle School has entered its third and final round of the 2009-2010 writing competition with the assignment of essay writing. With the deadline for entries last week, a winning entry has been chosen from the sixth, the seventh and the eighth grades.

The sixth-grade winner is Jessica Power for her essay, "What Color Means To Me." The seventh-grade winner is Alex Baietto for his essay, "Don't Seek Revenge." The eighth-grade winner is Nick Abbott for his essay, "Dancing to Your Own Tune."

The winning sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade essays will appear in the Feb. 5, 12, and 19 issues of the Greenwich Citizen.

Guest judge for the essay entries was Sally Bliumis-Dunn, a published poet who teaches "Approaches to Creative Writing" and a "Poetry Workshop" at Manhattanville College. Her "Approaches to Creative Writing" class encompasses the personal essay, poetry and short story. The "Poetry Workshop" focuses on the close reading of relatively famous poems.

Dunn, whose second book of poems, "Second Skin," is due out in November, hosted a "Poetry Break" television show last year, during which she talked with some of America's best known poets. The series was shown on Greenwich Community Television's Channel 79. Dunn's "Conversation with (poet) Eamon Grennan" can be seen online on YouTube.