Students Win Honors in Writing Contest

Offering anecdotes from their own lives, seven San Fernando Valley students captured top honors in a citywide essay and art contest on living together in a multicultural metropolis.

Sponsored by Los Angeles City Human Relations Commission and the Los Angeles Unified School District, the competition drew more than 500 entries from 44 elementary, middle and high school campuses. This year’s theme was “Los Angeles: How to Make This Living Mosaic Work.”

Cathleen Sullivan, a 16-year-old North Hollywood High School student who took first place in the high school category, used an artistic metaphor to discuss the city’s multicultural mix in her essay. “I compared society to an actual tile mosaic,” she said. “The diversity of cultures and types of people that we have are like the different types of tile you have in a mosaic.”

Juan Galeana tied for first place in the middle school category by describing events and experiences in his own life. “I just wrote things that happened, things that I see,” said the ninth-grader at Sun Valley’s Byrd Middle School. “It was pretty tough because I couldn’t find the right words.”

The other first-place winner was seventh-grader Kim Jiramongkolchai of Sepulveda Middle School in North Hills. Her English teacher, Francine Wong-Hauptman, described her as a talented writer who wrote eloquently about lessons she has learned from friends of other races.

Other Valley winners were Ellen Silver of El Camino Real High School in Woodland Hills, who took second place in the high school essay category; Anna North of Walter Reed Middle School in North Hollywood, who tied for third place in the middle school essay category; and four students from Castlemont School in Woodland Hills: Farra Mainstain and Katie Horwitch, who won second place, and Jessica Fine and Briana Evigan, who took third place in the elementary school art contest.

This morning, the winners will be honored in a City Hall ceremony with Mayor Richard Riordan and members of the City Council.