A 13-year-old girl has become America’s spelling champion.

Kavya Shivashankar, from Kansas, beat 10 other finalists to win the Scripps National Spelling Bee last night.

She collected more than $40,000 (£24,750) in cash and prizes as well as the champion’s trophy.

“I don’t think anything can replace spelling,” she said. “Spelling has been such a big part of my life.”

Kavya became the seventh Indian-American in 11 years to claim the title, including back-to-back winners who want to be neurosurgeons. Her role model is the 1999 winner Nupur Lala, who was featured in the documentary Spellbound and is now a research assistant in the brain and cognitive sciences laboratory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Kavya’s winning word was the adjective “Laodicean," meaning lukewarm or indifferent in religion or politics. Kavya wrote the letters in the palm of her hand with her finger as she called them out.

"This is the moment we've been waiting for; it's a dream come true," her father, Mirle, said. "We haven't skipped meals, we haven't lost sleep, but we've skipped a lot of social time." The 82nd annual bee attracted a record 293 participants, with the final shown on network television in prime time for the fourth consecutive year.

Among the spectators was Jill Biden, wife of Vice President Joe Biden, who kicked off the championship rounds by telling of a bout with nerves that caused her to drop out of a sixth-grade spelling contest.

"I know that confidence is the most important thing you can give a child," she told the audience.

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