Cobb student wins national poetry competition, $20,000

Samara Elán Huggins, a senior at Whitefield Academy in Mableton won a $20,000 prize and the title of 2017 Poetry Out Loud National Champion Wednesday.

Poetry Out Loud is a national initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with the Poetry Foundation and the state arts agencies that encourage high school students to learn great poetry, both classic and contemporary, through memorization and performance.

The Poetry Out Loud National Finals included 53 students out of 310,000 original competitors from every state, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.