Radnor High School sophomore Elyse Pitock, a 2007 Winner of Philadelphia Young Playwrights' Annual Playwriting Festival, has been chosen as a winner of the Young Playwrights Inc. National Playwriting Competition for her play A Snapshot of My Family. Ten winning plays were selected at the national level from over 800 submissions by students from all over the country.

Snapshot, which Pitock originally wrote as an eighth-grader at Radnor Middle School in Wayne, PA, won a first place in 2007. It was first produced in Philadelphia Young Playwrights' 2007 New Voices: Workshop Productions, and again as a staged reading in collaboration with The Wilma Theater as part of the 2008 Play Development Series. The Play Development Series offers student playwrights an extraordinary opportunity to interact with professional directors, dramaturgs, actors and stage crew in order to further develop their plays and see their work presented in a professional workshop production.

In New York, Pitock will be participating in a Young Playwrights, Inc. writers' conference in mid-January 2009 where she will work with a professional director, dramaturg and actors to further explore and revise her play. Staged readings of Pitock's play and other winning plays will be presented Off-Broadway in New York City on January 12, 13 and 14.

Philadelphia Young Playwrights has recently announced the full list of winners of its 2008 Annual Playwriting Festival, which can be viewed online at www.phillyyoungplaywrights.org. For information on Young Playwrights, Inc. visit www.youngplaywrights.org.

About Philadelphia Young Playwrights
Founded in 1987 by Adele Magner, and led today by Executive Producing Director Glen Knapp, Philadelphia Young Playwrights is an award-winning program that taps the potential of youth and inspires learning through playwriting in up to 50 public and private K-12 schools each year. A leader in the region's educational programs for youth and built upon its primary belief that all students have something important and valuable to say, Young Playwrights has enriched the Greater Philadelphia community, touching the lives of thousands of students, teachers and parents for the past twenty years. Young Playwrights is a 2008 Champion in Action and nominee for the Ted and Stevie Wolf Award for New Approaches to Collaboration, as well as a past recipient of 2005 and 1997 Barrymore Awards for Excellence in Theatre Education and Community Service, a 2003 George Bartol Award for Excellence in Arts Education, a national "Points of Light" designation, and a 2004 Eastern University Award for Nonprofit Excellence.