A Baltimore County high school student advanced to the final round of a national poetry reading contest and will compete in the final round Wednesday for a $20,000 prize.
After winning the statewide Poetry Out Loud competition in March, Sharese Acheampong of Owings Mills, a 17-year-old senior at New Town High School, went on to represent the state in the national competition this week in Washington, D.C. The state event attracted 9,000 contestants from 13 counties.
She moved on to the final round with eight other contestants after they competed on Tuesday in the semifinal round at the Lisner Auditorium at George Washington University with 53 other "state champions" who emerged from 317,000 competitors in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The champion wins $20,000.
The championship round is scheduled from 7-9:15 p.m. Wednesday and will be broadcast live at www.arts.gov, the website of the National Endowment for the Arts, which co-sponsors the contest with the Poetry Foundation.
An additional contest honoring the NEA's 50th anniversary will name a winner for writing an original poem. Acheampong also is competing for that honor with her poem "The Morrison House."