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The inspiration
for this year’s Student Literary Competition comes from
a slab of black basalt inscribed in three ancient
languages, currently residing in the British Museum.
When Jean Francois Champollion decoded this most famous
of literary artifacts – the Rosetta Stone – our ideas
about language and writing changed forever. Truly an
innovation in the making.
 Perhaps of all icons of ingenuity, writing is the
greatest innovation brought to the human stage so far. A
way to express ideas, challenge biases, archive the
past, imagine the future. This is the true root, the
groundswell of innovation.
Situated in the diverse community of Miami-Dade
County, and as the host of this year’s competition,
Miami Dade College hopes to help inspire all students
throughout the League institutions to celebrate language
and creativity in writing, to relish the diversity of
individual styles, and the glamour of cultural
uniqueness. Although not all literary output can be
“carved in stone,” we all need reminding that “for us,
there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.”
[Permit the enclosed stone to be your reminder ... ]
Evoking 19th century French Symbolist poet Stéphane
Mallarmé, T.S. Eliot encourages all writers to find the
heart – and the words – to announce our presence, our
purpose. We hope all of our student writers this year
will take the challenge – their words on paper and on
the screen – inscribing new iconic texts to communicate
who we are, who we hope to become ... to purify the
dialect of our tribe.
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