The ongoing success of this contest is obviously dependent on the students’ contributions, but just as crucial are the volunteer judges, who generously dedicate their time and opinions. The students are eager to see how their stories fare in the competition, because they know their story rests on its merit alone. Judges do not know anything specific about the student authors, beyond the fact that they are teenagers attending a TDSB Secondary School. There are no qualifiers attached, such as name, age, school, gender, or attempted genre. The stories are judged on their individual appeal to the judges who read them, within the contest’s criteria of length, format, and quality of writing. Each story is read and commented upon by at least three different judges.
So, who can become a judge?
Any adult who likes reading short stories, and who has a genuine interest in supporting fledgling writers as an unbiased audience. Judges are usually current English teachers, but that is not a requirement. Judges can be teachers of other subjects, on a leave-of-absence, or retired. But every year, we also engage members from the community to provide a different and equally important perspective for our young writers, who have risked putting their creative efforts “out there” to an audience of strangers.
The important qualification is that Judges be willing to provide detailed feedback about the stories they read in Round 1 (usually a batch of up to 10 stories)—writing comments in two categories for each story in the batch:
what the judge admires about the story, and
“next-step” suggestions to improve the story.
Because students wait about 3.5 months for feedback on their stories, we feel it is important that the wait be worthwhile, and that each of the promised written responses from three different judges provides commentary useful to the student’s development as a writer.