November 2025
The act of writing—putting thoughts to paper (or perhaps online!) and expressing oneself in ways that engage an audience reading those expressions—is incredibly powerful. Writing connects human beings and acts as both a window and a mirror into the human condition. Through reading and writing, humans can learn about one another’s experiences and often find their own emotions and experiences reflected in the story of another human.

It is that power of expression that led Marc and Jessica Beban to create a writing contest in memory of their daughter Leyla in 2013. Leyla loved to read and write stories, and was a young woman who, in the words of her father, “loved to get lost in the adventure of imagination and had hoped to publish ‘at least one’ book in her life.” They created a foundation in her name with the mission of providing “the encouragement, resources, training, and inspiration to young authors like Leyla.” The Foundation accomplished this mission by running an annual writing contest for writers in middle and high school for twelve years, supporting a writing camp for under-served students over two summers, donating laptops to an organization serving orphaned children in Kenya, and honoring the voices of our writers in an annual journal and ceremony for the reading of the winning stories.

In the twelve years of the $1,000 for 1,000 Words contest, over three hundred young authors have seen their stories published in our Bluefire journal. Those three hundred stories were chosen from among more than 9,000 from forty-six states and more than forty-seven countries. This contest also distributed $33,000 to our winners over the years. None of this would have been possible without the support of our board members over the years: Marc Beban, Jessica O’Rear, Mary Jo O’Rear, Jay Richards, Karen Tiegel, Betsy Parkhurst, Cynthia Richey, Lindsay Tam Holland, David Susman, Jan Ellison, Kathleen Coughlin, Jacie Krampert, Martha Fitzgerald, Shelly Masur, and Rebecca Loveless.

Running the contests was a joyful experience each year. The Foundation would open the contest in November and in the final days before the due date would be inundated by creativity from all over the world. In the first year, the contest received 300 submissions; three years later, the submissions topped 1,300! The judges (numbering between twenty and thirty amazing humans each year and over 100 over the twelve years of the contest!) carefully read each story, evaluating it on a scale of 1 to 4 (four being the highest). Judging culminated with a meeting of the Editorial Committee, who discussed the finalists each year, championing favorites and narrowing down the field to between 24 and 29 stories, with grade level winners. The committee then turned over the stories to a guest judge, who would choose one high school winner and one middle school winner.

Each year, themes would emerge, including: the power of friendship, the pain of broken relationships, the realities of learning differences, the love and loyalty of dogs, the turmoil of historical events, the impact of loss, the speculation around what the future might hold, the influence of AI, and the pull of the supernatural. Members of the editorial committee laughed at the humorous, honest insights of the characters and admired the beautiful descriptive language in many stories. They found themselves in tears after reading some of the stories, many of which felt authentic and autobiographical. The editorial committee often found themselves transported by the power of these young authors’ words and perspectives, and each year, felt renewed hope in the voices of these writers. It is a profound thing to read the words and learn about the experiences of others, even in fiction (or near-fiction). Sharing the words of the authors was also a labor of love. Each year, the Foundation published an anthology of the winning stories in the Bluefire journal—expertly printed by Jask Publishing. With beautiful work by young artists Diana Baszucki, Cecily Mock, and Felix Li, each cover reflected Leyla’s love of jellyfish and the color blue. The journal itself was named after a blue jellyfish. Claire Baszucki created the journal’s template and was in charge of layout and publishing for the first four years. From 2014 to 2019, the annual celebration was hosted by Kepler’s bookstore in Menlo Park, California. There, the young writers would hear words of wisdom from that year’s guest judge—a published author of young adult fiction—and then read their own work aloud. When the pandemic forced everyone online in 2020, the winning authors came together for a Zoom celebration and continued to read their stories to the assembled group. Hearing the stories read by the voices of their authors gave the words even more power.

And now, as we close the Leyla Beban Young Authors Foundation, we pass the baton to other organizations who support reading and writing in schools and communities. In the words of Leyla herself, we acknowledge the power of writing:

Spiriting you
To the land of books
Imagination rules here.
Tucked up in a corner,
All cozy and safe,
Mind in a book,
Body not here.

Branch into paper,
Leaf into cover.
Mourn the loss
Of such a tree.
But be grateful-
You have a book.
– Leyla Beban

Thank you all for an incredible, rewarding twelve years of the Foundation and for inspiring and empowering young writers from all over the world.