Once again, the time has come to award the children and young people who took part in the Third Edition of the Literary Contest in 3 Words. Unlike previous years, we have decided to host the ceremony in Novara within the splendid setting of the Broletto, as part of the literary festival “Novara di Carta – Autori in Circolo”.<br/>The stories for this edition were centered around the three words chosen from the poll we launched on our website last year: Friendship, Fear, and Idea. Participation was once again enormous, with nearly 1,000 participants from all over Italy.<br/>At the end of an evaluation process that lasted over two months, our jurors—Simone Sarasso, Sergio Giuntini, Mariano Settembri, Marco Benzoni, and Mariella Parravicini—first selected the top 30 from each category, which will be featured in the Anthology available at the end of September. After that, they faced the hard task of choosing the nine winners, three for each category.<br/>Below you can see the program for the event:

Thanks to a splendid summer day, the award ceremony was attended by a bumper crowd. The ninety finalists, coming from all over Italy, followed the event with great anticipation.<br/>On the truly impressive stage, we were honored to host two members of the jury: Simone Sarasso and Mariano Settembri,who entertained the audience by speaking about their experience as jurors. Before moving on to the report of the ceremony, we would like to thank Carlo Giordanetti and Luisa Gigante from Swatch Italia, as well as Eugenio Trombetta Panigadi and Patricia Veltri from IBS, for their immense help and collaboration.<br/>To begin the report: following a few microphone hiccups, the President of the Foundation spoke briefly about the three editions of the Literary Contest in 3 Words, before handing over to Vice President Laura Minuto. She shared the story of how our Foundation was born and what it has accomplished over these years of work, before leaving the floor to the jurors for their anecdotes.<br/>Then, starting with the Primary School category, the winners were called onto the stage and presented with their wonderful prizes. Tommaso Cuzzoni from Novara took third place with his story “La Paura”. Simona Paradiso from Bari collected second prize for her story “La panchina dell’amicizia”. Next, Rebecca Bonanno—winner of the previous edition—took the stage to present the first prize to Beatrice Masuello from Cuneo for her story “Pino e la forza dei sogni”.<br/>The ceremony continued with the Middle School awards. Third place went to Marta Ciaccia from Novara with the story “La paura del futuro”, and second place to Mattia Pullarà from Partinico (Palermo) with “Idealand e lo zio Piero”. Then,as with the Primary School category, we invited last year’s winner, Rebecca Vicini, onto the stage to present the first-place prize to Ana Maria Stanciu from Rome, author of the story “Sotto le stelle”.<br/>After the official photos, we moved on to the final category, High School. Third place was awarded to Alessio Gregori from Monterotondo (Rome) with the story “Tomás”, and second place to Rebecca Vicini from Novara with *”Anamnesi delle paure”—*who, after winning last year in the Middle School category, managed to reach the top three once again in the High School category. Finally, Sara Rigolio, the 2015 winner, awarded the first-place prize to Irene Fraccaro from Florence for her story “Immortali”, accompanied by stadium-like cheering from her classmates.<br/>Below you can see a few photos of the award ceremony and the winners, taken by Paolo Caporossi and David Zanardi,whom we sincerely thank: