Introducing Our 2024 Poetry Contest Finalists and Prize Package Winners!
I am so incredibly proud of this year’s winners! Please help me congratulate these fantastic poets, who are now winners of Yecheilyah’s Annual Poetry Contest, Season 7!
Her Journey to Joy by Trevita Johnson
Hope Moon, Joyful Skies by Arsenio M. Sorrell, aka Deep Thought the Lyricist
Echoes of Joy by D.A. Springer
Winners, please look out for an email in the next 24-48 hours with details on how to secure your prized package and the next steps for your interviews.
Each of these poets will receive an individual spotlight on the blog and an interview feature. We are eager for you to hear their winning poems and the inspiration behind their pieces.
Please head over to Instagram and show them some love. The post will go live on my page shortly. View and follow @yecheilyah.
Cool Fun Fact: When we announced the semi-finalists, I didn’t know who the three winners would be. At least not consciously. It wasn’t until we went over the poems with a fine-toothed comb and arranged them that I realized I had placed the winning poets in almost the exact order of the poems we loved most!
There was not a single poem I did not personally enjoy.
Everyone contributed something distinct while also teaching us something.
The variety and ingenuity, from visual to audio, were incredible. I appreciate how everyone put their best foot forward. I thank you for participating and sharing your heart with us!
Without further delay, the poets who have made it into the semi-finals and will go on for a chance to win the cash prizes are as follows (in no particular order):
Her Journey to Joy by Trevita Johnson
Hope Moon, Joyful Skies by Arsenio M. Sorrell, aka Deep Thought the Lyricist
Joy in the Morning by Lilanie, aka Kerece Williams
Echoes of Joy by D.A. Springer
Parable of the Daughter by Chérie J. Grant
Only three of these five will advance to the finals! That’s right. You are looking at your winners and don’t know it. And nope, they are not in order of placement for all you smart people, tee hee.
The ultimate announcement will be made on Thursday, January 2, 2025! Which of these dope poets made it to the top 3? Stick around and find out!
We pushed it back a day in case some of you return from travel.
As with each year, you can read the winning poems on this blog. We are also interviewing them live, so you don’t want to miss that!
In the meantime, please show these poets some love when you see the post, which goes live on my page shortly. View and follow @yecheilyah.
Thank you to everyone who participated in the contest this year. We will announce the semi-finalists on Friday, December 20, 2024.
In the meantime, the contest hoodies and t-shirts are now available on the website! Your support helps us keep this contest going year after year and keep it free to enter!
They are comfy, like a warm hug, and come in black and dark chocolate colors, with more to come. Sizes go up to 3XL.
The website also has a donation page if you are not interested in the gear but want to help.
As mentioned, I am reviving the Stella series with a fourth book! For those who have not read the first three books, I’ll share excerpts, nuggets, and tidbits as we prepare for the fourth installment. Today, we are refamiliarizing ourselves with some of the family. Enjoy!
Stella May
Born in 1845, Stella is the daughter of a Black woman named Deborah on Paul Saddler’s Plantation in Shreveport, Louisiana. From a young age, she can remember running through cotton fields and being loved by her family. To young Stella, life is simple and fun. She eats sweet cakes, plays with her friend Carla, and helps the grownups by carrying buckets of water to the field. Stella discovers she is a slave for the first time after Deborah’s unexplained death. Now, she learns the hard way the difference between slavery and freedom.
Solomon Curtis May
Solomon has no speaking roles, but his existence is essential for the family timeline. Solomon Curtis May is Stella’s only son, born in the fall of 1870 after she was sexually assaulted by the husband of her mistress. Solomon falls in love with a white woman and marries her after inheriting land outside Chicago. They have four girls: Deborah, named for his grandmother, Judith, Rebecca, and Sara.
Judith May
Solomon’s daughter Judith married a Black man and gave birth to a baby girl she named Stella after her grandmother. However, after enduring much teasing and discrimination for her mixed features, Judith’s daughter copes with this trauma by denying part of her ancestry. She changes her name from Stella to Sidney McNair and passes for white. After marrying a white man and having his children, Sidney lives her life on the other side of the color line.
Sidney McNair
Her aunt Sara influenced Sidney to pass for white and learn to enjoy her privileges. Sidney marries a wealthy white man named Clarence McNair, and they have four children: Edward, Karen, Joseph, and Glenda, whom they raise as white.
However, when she finally reveals the truth to her adult children in 1979, the shock of their real identity is a betrayal that stretches across generations.
Karen and Noah
Sidney’s daughter Karen McNair falls in love with a young Black man named Noah Daniels. He is a leading member of the Black Panther Party and thinks he’s dating a white girl. At this time, Karen also does not know that she is mixed race, although she has many more African American features than her siblings. The couple endures many trials because of their perceived interracial union. Together, they have a son, Noah Jr, who has a much more significant role as an adult in book four.
Edward McNair
Of all Sidney’s children, her sons are the most conflicted by their mother’s betrayal. Carrying many characteristics of his father, Clarence, Edward has not only lived his life as a white man but has also enjoyed the privileges of doing so and cannot come to grips with his new reality. In brief, Edward does not want to be Black, and his daughter, Cynthia, does not yet know about her true identity because of her father’s secrets.
However, although he appears to reject his heritage, something in Edward’s subconscious won’t allow him to completely forget it. We see this when he names his youngest son after his great-grandfather, Solomon.
Joseph McNair
Joseph is also conflicted about his mother’s decisions, but goes in another direction. Still under the illusion that he is just a white boy, he nevertheless feels sympathy for the plight of Blacks and fights for their freedom with his friends during the 1960s.
Unlike Edward, Joseph wishes he were Black. He grew up to marry a Black woman named Fae, and together, they have two children, a boy named Michael and a girl named Tanya.
Introducing Tanya and Michael…
Born in the early 90s, Tanya and Michael are the children of Joseph and Fae and are young adults in the early 2000s. They face the challenge of defining themselves in a society shaped by their father’s choices and haunted by the truths Stella once fought to conceal.
In book three, they are small children, but in book four, they are young adults. In his part, we weave together the struggles of a new generation to find their voice, identity, and place in a world still wrestling with its past. The echoes of Stella’s decisions resound, reminding us that even as times change, the threads of heritage and truth remain unbroken.
I was born in the late 1980s and grew up in the 90s, so groups like Jagged Edge, 112, and Dru Hill are my jam. Jagged Edge has this one song called “Seasons Change,” and although their song is about romance, it also makes me think about seasonal changes in general.
Toward the end of the year, there are always seasonal changes. You might notice the support is different or that you are different. This is part of preparing for a new season and, with it, a new era.
As the golden hues of autumn deepen into the stark whites of winter, nature offers a poignant lesson in letting go. Once heavy with vibrant green leaves, the trees surrender their foliage to the whims of the wind. It’s not a loss but a graceful shedding, a necessary preparation for renewal.
“Every time the seasons changes we do too. Nothing remains the same, neither should me and you. Gotta have faith in the way that he moves, as the seasons change.” – JE
If I could have glimpsed how this year would end, I would not have chosen to write about joy. I would have chosen overcoming or something more relatable to the times. The truth is joy has been a struggle. I look around the world and wonder if anyone cares anymore. I realize there is a time for everything. In the words of Zora Neale Hurston, “I have been in Sorrow’s1 kitchen and licked out all the pots. Then I have stood on the peaky mountain wrapped in rainbows, with a harp and a sword in my hands.”
For this, I am reminded that although the seasons do change and nothing is the same as it once was, it is joy in this release, a quiet celebration of trust. Autumn reminds us that letting go doesn’t mean forgetting but making space. The crisp, cool air carries the scent of fallen leaves and the promise of something new. In letting go of what no longer serves us—old habits, lingering doubts, or past mistakes—we find ourselves lighter and more open to the possibilities ahead.
With its stillness, winter teaches us to embrace emptiness’s beauty. The bare trees do not complain, but in the dead of winter, they stand tall against the snow, a reminder that strength remains even when we’re stripped of adornment. There’s comfort in the quiet, a chance to reflect and rejuvenate. Letting go allows us to rest, dream, and trust that life cycles will bring renewal in our own time.
See how joy can be found in letting go. It is not a loss; it’s a transformation. Like the seasons, we evolve, finding beauty in the shedding and the stillness. And as the days grow shorter and the nights longer, we learn that the most profound growth often comes in the quietest moments.
If you have not read the series, I highly recommend it in preparation for the next part. (If you read these books from 2015 to 2016, you are advised to read the revised editions with the alternate ending!)
Like the others, it will be a historical fiction novella or short novel.
When Cynthia McNair’s grandmother overhears her and her boyfriend joking about Blacks in a derogatory way, she has a story. Born in 1845, Stella Mae was an enslaved woman on the Saddler Plantation in Shreveport, Louisiana. Forced to stay on the plantation after Emancipation, she endures much abuse and revelation. She eventually gives birth to an only son, whom she names Solomon Curtis Mae. Stella’s story takes place in book one, Between Slavery and Freedom.
Solomon was given land by the same enslaver who freed him and Stella. As a man, Solomon married a white woman, and they had four girls: Deborah, Rebecca, Judith, and Sara.
Solomon’s daughter Judith gave birth to a baby girl named after her grandmother because they looked so much alike. However, this Stella did not take pride in who she was and lived her life as a white woman and raised her children as white. We watch her struggle from delusion to acceptance during the Jim Crow era as she navigates being married to a racist white man who doesn’t even know his wife is Black. Stella has even changed her name to Sidney McNair. Her story takes place in the second book, Beyond the Colored Line.
Sidney McNair, formerly Stella, gave birth to four children: Edward, Karen, Jospeh, and Glenda. Edward is Cynthia’s father.
Because she raised them as white, Sidney’s children did not know about their African ancestry until 1979. The person most conflicted about this was Joseph, who felt sympathy for the plight of Blacks and fought for their freedom with his friends during the 1960s. His story takes place in the third book, The Road to Freedom. In book three, we learn that Joseph married a Black woman named Fae, and they had two children, Tanya and Micheal.
Joseph’s Children: Book Four in the Stella Series (WIP)
Book Four unfolds in 2008. Tanya is now eighteen, her confidence growing as she steps into adulthood with fire in her heart and ambition in her eyes. Her sixteen-year-old younger brother Michael wrestles with the same questions of identity and purpose that once drove their father to leave home in search of answers nearly half a century earlier.
Against the backdrop of Barack Obama’s historic presidency, the heartbreak of Trayvon Martin’s murder, and the rise of Black Lives Matter, Joseph’s children navigate a new era. They face the challenge of defining themselves in a society shaped by their father’s choices and haunted by the truths Stella once fought to conceal.
The story weaves together the struggles of a new generation to find their voice, identity, and place in a world still wrestling with its past. The echoes of Stella’s decisions resound, reminding us that even as times change, the threads of heritage and truth remain unbroken, binding the present to the past.
This is your reminder to submit your poem on or before December 1st to participate in this year’s poetry contest and win cash prizes and promotions.
Your poem must focus on joy in some way and be in our inbox on or before the clock strikes midnight on December 1, 2024!
Email your poem to support@yecheilyahsannualpoetrycontest.org.
Tips for Submitting Video:
Now that the contest is in full swing, you might be wondering how to submit a video of you reciting your poem. As you might recall, we are accepting audio and video submissions. If you choose this, remember you still must send us the written version.
You can upload it to YouTube or Vimeo. Set it to private and send us the link.
You can send it via Google Drive to support@yecheilyahsannualpoetrycontest.org.
You can use Dropbox. I have created a temporary account for us under support@yecheilyahsannualpoetrycontest.org.
There is a website that makes uploading large files super easy. It is called We-Transfer, and it’s free to use. Here is the link: wetransfer.com. In the email space, put support@yecheilyahsannualpoetrycontest.org.
Another website that allows video files to be sent is Sharefile. Here is the link: www.sharefile.com
Note: Do not upload your video to Instagram, TikTok, or Facebook because there is no way to keep it private (even with a private account). This is a competition. We don’t want anyone’s poetry leaked until the contest ends and the winners are announced. After that, you are welcome to distribute your work far and wide! (This also helps to protect your intellectual property!)
For details on entering, please click the link below and share this with the poets you know!
The PBS Blog 