Illustrating the Effort of Friendship: 20th Annual WD Poetry Awards Winner

I love getting to select the winner of the Writer’s Digest Poetry Awards each year, even if it is always a bit of a challenge. In 2026, there were more than 800 entries covering a range of forms, subjects, issues, and themes. In the end, I selected Susan Rounds’ “The Starling and the Hedgehog” for the First Place Prize of $1,000, publication in Writer’s Digest, and a 20–minute consultation with yours truly.

Rounds is a first grade teacher with a busy life, “But I’m always writing.” In fact, she’s participated in Moriah Richard’s February Flash Fiction Challenge and my own April Poem-A-Day Challenge on WritersDigest.com, in addition to other writing challenges. For me, her poem “The Starling and the Hedgehog” was a fun combination of story and rhyme (and misunderstanding).

Here’s a quick Q&A:

I wrote this poem during a PAD challenge with my writing group. I was fighting cancer at the time (all better now), and a friend advised me to participate to keep my mind occupied on other endeavors. I didn’t know much about the various poetic forms and hadn’t written much poetry before the challenge.

Each day in the challenge included a poetic form and a key word. I had to consult WritersDigest.com every day to learn how to write the various forms. “The Starling and the Hedgehog” came from this challenge with the key word of rendezvous.

There happened to be starlings in my yard that day. It made me wonder with whom a starling might rendezvous, and could they possibly be friends? (Remember that I spend my days with 6-year-olds.) The rhyming was my choice.

I did revise this poem. It didn’t start out as a rhyming poem. It started almost like a story. But I enjoy playing with words and loved the sound and rhythm of rendezvous, so I decided to incorporate rhyme. I also wanted the cadence to be right, so I read and reread the rhymes out loud, counted syllables and beats, and listened for emphasis on the beats.

I also changed the “snafu” once or twice. But as a teacher, I wanted to make the poem a lesson, so I included the diurnal and nocturnal animals in there along with the theme of friendship and how it takes effort.

I have submitted my writing to a variety of publishing professionals in the past but was not successful. The experience discouraged me a bit. Now, I write mostly for myself. Entering the Poetry Awards was a first and required some risk-taking for me. But for some reason, this poem stuck with me. I just couldn’t get it out of my head.

When I saw the announcement for the Poetry Awards, I remembered that I would have never written “The Starling and the Hedgehog” and the other 29 poems during that April challenge without Writer’s Digest’s resources to guide me. So, I submitted, hoping that someone would like the poem as much as I did.

Keep writing—no matter what! Your words are important. They are important to you, and you never know, someone else might need those words too.