Creative Writing Scholarship Winners!

Congratulations to our Scholarship winners!

Clark-Gross Award in the Novel $100 External judge, Tameka Latrece Cage Conley

Winner: Nina Rodenko 

There is a handle on the storytelling that is mature, interesting, thoughtful, and layered. Richness abounds in the details of the prose. Very memorable. Curious, intelligent world-building.

Daniel Langton Poetry Prize $100

Winner: Karla Khine

Formally imaginative with strong content.

Elizabeth June Madden-Zibman Creative Writing Endowed Scholarship $7,500 (surprise additional amount from donor)

Winner: Alexandra Rios

Effective use of scene, vivid details and a compelling sense of urgency.

James Milton Highsmith Drama Award

Cancelled due to low entries.

Joan Gelfand Creative Writing Scholarship $1,000

Andrew Pimentel

A mature sensibility informs these poems, which explore the experience of essential workers during the pandemic.  Emotion without sentimentality.  The poem about the postal worker, "Letter to My Congressman," is richly detailed, inflected with a touch of anger.  This intelligent, passionate work stood above that of the other applicants.  Dispatches from particular lives.

Kathryn A. Manoogian Scholarship in Creative Writing $1,500

Winner: Chava Benioff-White

The story and details are well-written.

Marcus Second Year Graduate Student Scholarship $2,500 (2 awards)

Winer: Tashina Boyer-Armstrong

Very strong.

Winner: Karla Khine

Terrific work. Interesting formal experiments. Moving.

Wilner Award in Short Fiction External judge, Luke Dani Blue

Winner: Charles Byrne

A charming character study narrated in a voice reminiscent of the huckster in Valeria Luiselli's Story of My Teeth or the earnest old man from George Saunders' "My Flamboyant Grandson." Thematically, the story centers a millennial sense of economic futility and the lie of progress under American capitalism for those coming of age after the aughts. The wonderfully rhythmic, old-timey voice becomes a mouthpiece for this contemporary frustration as the narrator pursues the key to the Social Security Office's benefit's formula with obsession nearing absurdity. I was impressed throughout by the clarity of vision and keen attunement to the prose. It's easy to imagine following such a voice for the duration of a novel.

Runner Up Minyoung Lee

A wonderful, mind-boggling premise: this impossible-yet-irrefutable mountain, the father and son unable to anything but watch as it expands across their land. The simplicity of the language and archetypal characters give the story an air and subtle lyricism of a fable. I felt those particular strengths were undermined by the melodrama of Emily's death and the less original beats of Pawpaw's outburst after the mountain fell. Nonetheless, the story is striking and the images and unnameable dread-beauty of the mountain's apparition linger within me after its ending.

Honorable Mention Hailey Johnson

I remained entranced by the intensity of feeling throughout and only wanted to know more about the newborn thing and what it meant to the woman.