The Greater Kansas City Writing Project is a university based national writing site dedicated to improving and supporting student writing. They do this through offering writing classes, as well as an annual writing competition. Recently, Kristina Happel was one of many student writers to enter their competition, and is one of the few to advance to the next stage.

“What it is, is you can submit nonfiction, short stories, personal narratives, poetry. I submitted poetry, and there’s three levels to it. There’s honorable mentions, which Abbee Hilgers got last year. Then there’s Silver Key, which is like second place. And then there’s Gold Key, which I was awarded- Gold Key goes on to be judged in nationals,” Happel said.

While she and Mrs. Hargis, the previous teacher of Creative Writing, had been anticipating Happel’s participation in the contest since the year prior, the process of submitting her writing turned into an amusing story she recounted.

[Mrs. Hargis] was waiting for them to email her with the information, and finally the day we got back, it was January 4th, I come and I’m like, ‘so have you heard anything about that contest because I know it’s due sometime in January,’ and she’s like, ‘I haven’t gotten anything let me look on their website.’ She can’t log in so she has to remake her account. Turns out the deadline was that day. I go to the library, and then I’m out there just getting my poems that I did in that one collection. I was picking like my favorites, kind of fixing them, kind of not really. So I’m already stressed out. And then literally, three o’clock, I get all the stuff sent in,” Happel said.

Happel has been interested in writing since it was first introduced to her as a hobby in second grade, and it became a dream of hers to write.

“Third grade I decided, one of these days, I’m going to be published. I liked writing, I don’t know, I think I liked it more because people told me I was good at it. So I would write in my free time,” Happel said.

Her skills in poetry, however, only became a recent development in her writing career.

“Come early junior year, I had never written poetry before, and we did that ‘Where I’m From’ poem. I was like, ‘I like this, I like making words sound pretty.’ I would make my prose really poetic, because I like how words function together, how they sound together. I found out that I really like poetry, I don’t have to write 30 thousand words, I can write two pages and the poem can be done. It’s also really cool because since poetry is so short, each word is really important, and words have certain connotations. I find specific words to put in poems. I think poetry is really cool now,” Happel said.

While it is still unknown whether or not Happel’s poetry will win at nationals, the chance to be published online in an edition of Missouri Youth Write is exciting, and succeeding this far has only pushed her further in wanting a future in writing.

“I will definitely write in the future, because I would really actually like to hold a physical copy of my publications. One day I would like to write a book, have a physical book that I can hold in my hands and be like, ‘I made this,’” Happel said.