Arapahoe Community College's Writer's Studio Contest selected Kristin Leclaire's essay, "Portraits," for their first place prize this year. Kristin Leclaire is an English teacher at Arapahoe High School and enjoys writing creative nonfiction. Here is what the judge, Steve Harvey, had to say about her writing: 

"'Portraits' is a moving account of the author's four-year-old son, Sam, a four-year old artist with a severe heart condition. The essay avoids sentimentality through its keen eye for detail, its rich use of metaphor, and a thorough understanding of children and children's art. The essay builds to its penultimate moment with sentences like this, describing the chaos of a code blue warning at the hospital: "I felt the hospital's chaos again this summer with one, soul-shaking code blue that made my hands quake like they were trying to hold together a cracked-open world." She tells us that it "hurts her fingertips" to type Sam's prognosis of "ongoing morbidity and mortality." She wants to "climb Mount Olympus with him" making the "hospital small as a pebble, and Sam's heart full as a star." "Portraits" is an unrelentingly intense tribute to a mother's love for an ill child."

Kristin will be reading her piece at A.C.C.'s literary festival on April 23.