For the third year, the Independent has teamed up with the Santa Barbara Public Library to hold a community writing contest open to teens and adults based on the year’s Santa Barbara Reads selection. The chosen tome for 2019 was Benjamin Alire Sáenz’s young adult novel Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe.
For the writing contest, entrants were to choose one of several prompts offered that speak to the book’s narrative and write a poem or essay relating to it. In the adult category, 97-year-old Lisl Auf der Heide won with her touching ode to the memory of her father, using “I came to understand that my father was a careful man…” as the starting point. Sixteen-year-old Emily Esquivel took top honors for her essay that reflected on “Birds exist to teach us things about the sky. … If we studied birds maybe we could learn to be free.” Here are the winning pieces.