November 22, 2010 - Rey Casas, a fourth-grader from Zavala Elementary School, was the winner of the Fall Poem Contest sponsored by Badgerdog Literary Publishing, an Austin arts and education nonprofit organization. Rey’s winning poem will be printed on a card and delivered to patrons of a dozen Austin restaurants along with their checks. All winning entries will also be posted on the organization’s blog, Unbound. The poems were selected from more than 100 entries from students in the Manor, Del Valle and Austin school districts.

The two finalists are Jerome Horton, a fourth-grader at Ortega Elementary, and Aubrey Harlan, another fourth-grader from Zavala.  
 
Badgerdog Literary Publishing brings professional writers into language arts classrooms to lead creative writing workshops with students in grades three through 12. The workshops are designed to unleash students’ creativity and bolster instruction in TEKS reading and writing objectives. Badgerdog students work year-round with their writers to practice the crafts of poetry and fiction, playwriting and nonfiction. At the end of each workshop, all young writers’ works are published in a library-quality anthology, entitled Rise (for elementary students) and Emerge (for middle- and high-school students).  
 
Badgerdog is working with eight East Austin elementary schools in the 2010-2011 school year, a partnership made possible by a grant from Impact Austin. The grant allows Badgerdog to provide 24 workshops over two years to fourth-grade classrooms at Allan, Allison, Brooke, Govalle, Metz, Ortega, Sanchez, and Zavala elementary schools, at no cost to AISD.  
 
The restaurants that will feature Rey’s poem are: Fonda San Miguel, Chez Zee, Eastside Café, Fino, Asti, Hyde Park Bar and Grill, Santa Rita, Blue Star, Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse, Lambert’s, Mulberry, Threadgills (South) and Garrido’s.  
 
For more information about Badgerdog, contact Giuseppe Taurino Sailer at 538-1305. To visit the blog, go to www.badgerdog.org/unbound.  
The winning poems are also attached.