Writer? Here's your competition

Jemma Leech is a 10-year-old Houston fifth-grader at Mark Twain Elementary School. The Houston Chronicle reported that yesterday she was named first-place winner in the 16-and-under category of the prestigious London-based "Write Up Your Street" competition, easily winning out over 1600 other competitors. From the Chronicle article, here's what Jemma had to say about writing two years ago in her short autobiography:

"Written words are for me the glue which keeps my existence held fast in a semblance of stability. Without words, it would all come crashing round my ears, turning bright sunshine into darkest night. Poetry fills my soul with delightful hues of life's momentary escapes into bliss, and torment. Language is my paint and my keyboard is my brush."

Jemma uses a keyboard with her mother's help because she has limited control of her mobility because of cerebral palsy. She also wants to write music. Remember, she's 10.

An excerpt from her winning essay, entitled "A Hawarden Grove Christmas":

"But on that Christmas Day the mist had come down, the park was an island and we were cut off from the mass of humanity beyond the mist. It was just me, my brother and sister, and our weary parents inhaling the fog like perfume on a cloud of silage steam grateful for the relief it brought from the stench of London. That mist-bound land was our kingdom that day, and I was its princess, adorned with a crown of diamond drips and drops, soon dried by the warmth of our terraced palace on Hawarden Grove."