FSPA Conference at University of South Florida Recap

Last Friday, two Riverview students took home first-place awards from the annual Florida Scholastic Press Association (FSPA) conference held at USF. Emma Richards won for her entry in the Instagram Reporting contest, and William Lorenzen for his Flash Fiction submission. Both contests were new categories added for this year’s conference and had over 60 schools competed in them.

For her winning submission into the Instagram Reporting category, Richards was given an hour to create an Instagram story on a given topic. When asked, she liked how she was pushed out of her comfort zone to incorporate the required visual elements. Till this point she has near exclusively worked with writing. For Lorenzen’s Flash Fiction entry, he was tasked with writing a short story about a salt and pepper shaker. He was also given a maximum word count of 300 words which proved his greatest challenge. Overall, he was happy with how the story turned out, but wishes he could have made it longer.

This was Riverview’s third year in attendance, and the first time capturing two first place awards. According to Mike Zelazo, head of the Riverview Newspaper and Creative Writing departments, “Us bringing home two first-place awards is a tribute to their ability as writers and journalists” and he was ecstatic to achieve the “best results in a very tough field”.