Indiana State Library: Letters About Literature

Letters About Literature

Introduction

Letters About Literature

Letters About Literature is an Indiana reading and writing contest for students in grades 4-12. Students are asked to read a book, poem, essay, or speech and write to the author (living or deceased) about how the work affected how they see themselves or how they see the world. State winners are announced each spring. Indiana’s winners receive cash prizes and are published in an annual anthology. If you are in grades 4-12 and live in Indiana, you are eligible to enter the Indiana Letters About Literature reading and writing contest.

The Indiana Letters About Literature contest is a program of the Indiana Center for the Book, an affiliate of the Library of Congress. The contest is supported by the James and Madeleine McMullen Family Foundation and the Indiana State Library Foundation. To support the Indiana Letters About Literature program, donate here.

Contest Information

The Indiana Letters About Literature contest is now open for the 2024-2025 contest cycle.

2025 Letters About Literature Awards Ceremony

The 2025 Indiana Letters About Literature Awards Ceremony will be held virtually.
Directions to attend the virtual ceremony will be emailed to winning students, parents, and teachers. Please reach out to Suzanne Walker at suwalker@library.in.gov if you have questions.

Our special guest speaker for 2025 is:

INDIANA AUTHOR LISA FIPPS

With her debut middle-grade novel, Starfish, Lisa Fipps won 13 awards, including the 2022 Michael L. Printz Honor Book Award, and the novel in verse was selected for 45 state award/book lists. Her second novel in verse, And Then, BOOM!, came out in May 2025. She’s done virtual and in-person author visits with thousands of children in America, Canada, and China, in addition to being a guest speaker and panelist at festivals and conferences. Starfish has been translated into Turkish, Korean, Spanish, and complex Chinese, and will soon be coming out in four other languages. Lisa is also an award-winning former journalist, and an award-winning former library marketing director. She currently lives in Indiana and has lived in Texas.

About the Program

There are three competition levels:

Level I: Grades 4-6
Level II: Grades 7 & 8
Level III: Grades 9-12

Prizes are awarded to the following winners in each level:

All winners are published in our Annual Indiana Letters About Literature Anthology
First Place: $100.00 + Publication
Second Place: $50.00 + Publication
Third Place: $30.00 + Publication
Honorable Mentions: $20.00 + Publication
Finalists: Publication

All winners are announced by late March and receive an invitation to the Indiana Letters About Literature Awards Ceremony.

LAL supports educational standards established for reading and language arts as recommended by the International Literacy Association and the National Council for the Teaching of English.

History of the Program

In the past, the Letters About Literature program was sponsored by the Library of Congress. The Library of Congress concluded its 27th and final year of the contest with the 2018-2019 program. However, the Library of Congress gave permission to all state Centers for the Book to continue the program on their own if they so desired. Indiana is proud to be able to keep offering this contest for Indiana students. While there will be no national winners, our winners will continue to be honored with cash prizes, publication in our annual anthology and an annual event. Information about past winners is available by visiting Read.gov/letters. Indiana is particularly proud of our two students who took national awards in the Library of Congress program. Yael Epstein won the National Award for Level II in 2019, the last year of the Library of Congress’s involvement in the program, and Paw Soe won an National Honorable Mention for Level III in 2012.

IYRC SW 4-11-2024