2019 Creative Writing Contest Winners
The William Carlos Williams Prize, from the Academy of American Poets
Awarded to the best original poetry by a graduate student
Winner: Ethan Plaue
Contest judge José Felipe Alvergue writes: Sometimes poetry is like weaving, and sometimes in weaving there is a necessary disentangling in order to being again, towards the clarity of pattern. “The distribution of entanglements,” writes Ethan Plaue, “is thought into the line that point of view becomes.” “Fog Line” is like a tide pushing further and further back surface, and revealing in each metric, symbolic undoing of one’s inner grammar the essential dilemma of poetic speech: consequence. An “actionable” object––or word––turned pursuit, until the spontaneity of appreciation simply blooms.
Second Place: Davy Knittle
Contest judge José Felipe Alvergue writes: The thing about the cold, about winter, is that it compresses. As a response, a desire to survive it, the body begins pressing memories, and observations, resemblances, and disparities into a thick blanket of inner-goo. It is a language of sorts, the way language is literally soil for others who adore excavating. Reading Davy Knittle’s “yankee.” is like looking at this soil after it’s been cut like a giant cake. But feeling, also, the desire to survive the way one feels when confronted by deep snow, or in the duration of a long drive away from it. The momentum in the work is that desire. It is a momentum that finds space in “papa.” and “echo.”––part of a terrascape where the last 30 years remain partially unearthed, articulated, and left for two people.
Third Place: Julien Brugeron
Contest judge José Felipe Alvergue writes: In looking for sense in the documentation of our world Julien Brugeron’s “What brings US together” does not fail to remember the body, specifically its health, and its being situated between the bluntness of a medication label and an aesthetic quality to living that perhaps poetry is best suited to nourish. The idea and its carriage are equally dependent on remembering, on not forgetting.
About the judge: José Felipe Alvergue is the author of gist : rift : drift : bloom (Further Other Book Works 2015), precis (Omnidawn 2017), and the chapbook us look up/there red dwells (Queue Books). He is a graduate of both the Cal Arts Writing and Buffalo Poetics programs, and his work appears in journals such as the Boston Review, Apogee, Nocturnes, Black Clock, Kadar Koli, Tupelo Quarterly, and TAB. He lives in Wisconsin where he teaches contemporary literature and transnationalism, and his critical writing on poetics, performance, and transnational studies can also be found in numerous journals, including Criticism, Comparative Literature, and the minnesota review, among others.
The College Alumni Society Poetry Prize
Awarded to the best original poetry by an undergraduate student
Winner: Juliet Lubwama
Contest judge José Felipe Alvergue writes: Elegance in poetry is also a measure of the great power of juxtapositions, resemblances, the relationships between intimate feelings and the public. Elegance is the historical reminder of “trees” when writing about lynching. Juliet Lubwama writes in that powerful space of the asymptote, where the event and the emotion are, but never touch. Where someone is reaching, someone inheriting, but never reconciling, that important space where to feel requires a certain kind of space that allows us to “process our own wind.”
Second Place: Carlos Price-Sanchez
Contest judge José Felipe Alvergue writes: When we look at brick facades it’s difficult to recognize that each seemingly similar brick is in fact uniquely and infinitely different. Heavily brushed paintings are this way also, where each stroke is a fingerprint of sorts. But as a whole, staring at a series of bricks or brush strokes we are left with an undeniable impression. Carlos Price-Sanchez’s “Incarnations” exist this way. An incarnation is the embodiment, in the tangible, of an abstraction. Realizing that we stand before an incarnation, however, is something else. It’s the opening of a threshold where the abstraction and the tangible freely exchange locations: “No explosion, but the memory / of one.”
Third Place: Rodney Dailey
Contest judge José Felipe Alvergue writes: In 1975 Peter Eisenman, writing on House X, concludes that “The vertebrae house is also mimetic; it mirrors man’s upright axial condition.” This takes some degree of liberty in imagining that “man’s condition” is an inalienable historical condition that hasn’t been fought for, and that fighting leaves no other emotional or psychic architecture to read. A house that mimics the condition of the mind as simultaneously an emotive and spatial image is something more resounding. Rodney Dailey’s “Rodhaus” is the poetic-mimetic space of an occupation––an endeavor to remain bodied in the barrage of being metaphorized; yet the poetics is also an inquisition and not simply the dwelling: “Can you paint each lash separate?”
About the judge: José Felipe Alvergue is the author of gist : rift : drift : bloom (Further Other Book Works 2015), precis (Omnidawn 2017), and the chapbook us look up/there red dwells (Queue Books). He is a graduate of both the Cal Arts Writing and Buffalo Poetics programs, and his work appears in journals such as the Boston Review, Apogee, Nocturnes, Black Clock, Kadar Koli, Tupelo Quarterly, and TAB. He lives in Wisconsin where he teaches contemporary literature and transnationalism, and his critical writing on poetics, performance, and transnational studies can also be found in numerous journals, including Criticism, Comparative Literature, and the minnesota review, among others.
The Phi Kappa Sigma Fiction Prize
Awarded to the best original short story by an undergraduate student
Winner: Trace Fontil, “The Parts of a Mother That Never Leave”
Contest judge Kyoko Mori writes: I admired this story for the strong evocation of place and the unflinching exploration of a mother-daughter relationship. The writer does not shy away from exposing her characters to danger and ending the story with the central character’s realization of the power she inherited from her mother: her empowerment is at once beautiful and chilling. I will always remember the bowl of fish blood and the fish who becomes yours if you bite its cheek.
Second Place: Greta Kandel, “An Encyclopedia of Insects”
Contest judge Kyoko Mori writes: The story develops a young boy’s character through his fascination with insect life—I was immediately taken with this character on the first page, with the detail about how he had been keeping a tally of insect bites because he was fascinated by the idea that insects were surviving by using his body as a source of food. The writing is at once clear and evocative, crisp and yet mysterious, like the puzzle that the boy tries to put together.
Third Place: Daniel Finkel, “Calvin Conroy Has Successfully Died”
Contest judge Kyoko Mori writes: The quirky sense of humor carries us through this story about a long car trip taken on to attend a funeral. The different elements—the TV show episode the central character is trying to write, the ruse that Dr. Chatterjee (who turns out not to be South Asian after all) uses to distract security guards at stores, and the central character’s conflicted relationship with his family—all come together and pay off when the central character “performs” at a karaoke bar.
About the judge: Kyoko Mori is the author of three nonfiction books (The Dream of Water; Polite Lies; Yarn) and four novels (Shizuko’s Daughter; One Bird; Stone Field, True Arrow; Barn Cat). Her stories and essays have appeared in Harvard Review, Fourth Genre, Ploughshares, The American Scholar, Conjunctions, The Best American Essays, and other journals and anthologies. She teaches in George Mason University’s MFA Program in Creative Writing and Lesley University’s Low-Residency MFA Program. Kyoko lives in Washington, DC, with her two cats, Miles and Jackson.
The Judy Lee Award for Dramatic Writing
Awarded to a graduate or undergraduate student for the best script (stage, screen, television, or radio)
Winner: “Rabbit” by Samantha Friskey
Contest judge Amina Henry writes: This script is sensitive and culturally relevant, and presents admirably complex characters and relationships in a tight several scenes.
Second Place: “Desolation Angels” by Timur Almazov
Contest judge Amina Henry writes: This script presents a classic father-son conflict in a somewhat fresh way. The writer exercises an admirable restraint that allows emotional truth to shine through without tumbling into sentimentality.
Third Place: “Turnover” by Matthew Borlik
Contest judge Amina Henry writes: This script displays a fertile imagination and an admirable attention to detail, as well as a female protagonist that one can really root for.
About the judge: Amina Henry is a Brooklyn-based playwright. Productions include: Hunter John and Jane at JACK, Ducklings at JACK, The Animals at JACK, Happily Ever at Brooklyn College, An American Family Takes a Lover at Theater for the New City, Water produced by Drama of Works, Cindy produced by Project Y Theatre, and Bully at Interrobang Theater, Clubbed Thumb, and SUNY Purchase. She is currently working on commissions from the New Group, HERO Theater, and Project Y Theatre. Her work has been developed by, produced, and/or presented at: the New Group, the Flea, Ars Nova, Clubbed Thumb, Page 73, National Black Theater, Barefoot Theater, Little Theater at Dixon Place, HERE Arts Center, Oregon Shakespeare Festival (Ashland, OR), Kitchen Dog Theater (Dallas, TX), Interrobang Theatre (Baltimore, MD), and Texas State University, among other theaters and venues. She was a 2017–2018 recipient of a Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC) Space Grant and a 2018 Dixon Place Space Residency, and is a New George’s Affiliate Artist. Upcoming: New Light Theater’s production of The Great Novel, June 2019 at the Flea.
The Lilian and Benjamin Levy Award
Awarded to the best review by an undergraduate student of a current play, film, music release, book, or performance
Winner: Annabelle Williams on Alice Bolin’s Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession
Contest judge James Marcus writes: Annabelle Williams is both drawn to and repelled by the Dead Girl mythology in Alice Bolin’s essay collection, and this gives her review some attractive friction. It’s rare to find a young critic making such productive use of ambivalence—bravo for that.
Second Place: Alexa Lieberman on Tennessee Williams’s Summer and Smoke
Contest judge James Marcus writes: Reviewing a lesser-known work by a theatrical giant requires not just critical finesse but context. Alexa Lieberman delivers both, making the case for more frequent revivals of the play that was unlucky enough to follow A Streetcar Named Desire onto the boards.
Third Place: Izzy Lopez on Lily & Madeleine at World Cafe Live
Contest judge James Marcus writes: Lopez, too, does double duty, reviewing a live show but also giving us a capsule history of the band and its evolution from folk purists to pop magpies. The prose is informative, detailed, and enlivened by what I can only call attitude (in the good sense).
About the judge: James Marcus is the former editor of Harper’s Magazine and the author of Amazonia: Five Years at the Epicenter of the Dot-Com Juggernaut. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, The Nation, and The Paris Review, and his next book, Glad to the Brink of Fear: A Portrait of Emerson in Fourteen Installments, will be published next year.
The Literary Translation Prize
Awarded to the best English-language translation of verse or prose from any language by a graduate or undergraduate student
Winner (tie): Maria Kovalchuk, translation of lines 512-530 of The Trojan Women by Euripides (Ancient Greek)
Contest judge Teresa Villa-Ignacio writes: Kovalchuk boldly harnesses ballad meter and its resounding assonances in this reckoning of the Trojans’ tragic role, through their “rash naïveté,” in the destruction of their own city. This powerfully translated lament sounds a warning to any society whose self-destruction may lie in its tendency to become distracted by frivolity while true threats and actual deception creep in.
Winner (tie): Bill Beck, translation of Eclogue 1 by Virgil (Latin)
Contest judge Teresa Villa-Ignacio writes: Beck offers this ancient testimony to a catastrophic injustice in a modern idiom and fresh cadences. The characters’ abiding love of homeland and terror of forced displacement speak clearly to today’s migratory crises: “After many harvests, will I ever return / in wonder to my ancestral home? / Will a soldier take possession of my lands, / a foreigner on my fields? For what / did civil war leave us like this?”
Second Place: Chris Mustazza, translation of excerpts from “Matins” by Italo Testa (Italian) and “I Write for the Day” by Anna de Noailles (French)
Contest judge Teresa Villa-Ignacio writes: Mustazza’s translation of Testa’s poems vividly renders the sinister intersection of corporate construction sites and the natural world with carefully syncopated caesurae and enjambments, while his energetic translation of de Noailles’ at once playful and serious love poem to a young future reader suggests that the poem has indeed fulfilled the author’s intention: “And for a young guy someday reading what I write / Who feels himself moved, unsettled, surprised, / Thinks of his real wife and then he forgets her, / Then invites me in because he likes me better.”
Third Place: Samantha Friskey, translation of “Yesterday morning, today” by Jaime Gil de Biedma (Spanish)
Contest judge Teresa Villa-Ignacio writes: Delivering this covert yet audaciously evocative vision of sensuality by Biedma, a gay poet writing under Franco, Friskey “translates” the poet’s propensity for risk-taking into daring translational choices — “against an open window pane, / contemplating water-on-water. // A split-second image” — that amplify the poem’s themes of similitude, proximity, and ephemerality.
About the judge: Teresa Villa-Ignacio is a scholar and translator whose research explores contemporary poetic interventions in ethical philosophy, postcolonial liberation movements, discourses of globalization, and social justice activism. Her translation projects include, as coeditor, Souffles-Anfas: A Critical Anthology from the Moroccan Journal of Culture and Politics (Stanford University Press, 2016) and, as contributing translator, Modern Art in the Arab World: Primary Documents (MOMA, 2018) and For an Ineffable Metrics of the Desert, the selected poems of the Moroccan poet Mostafa Nissabouri (Otis Books/Seismicity Editions, 2018). She is also the coeditor of Traduire le Maghreb/Translating the Maghreb, a special issue of Expressions maghrébines (15.1, Summer 2016). Her current book project examines the centrality of ethics in relations of translation and collaboration among France- and US-based contemporary poets. She is assistant professor of French and Francophone Studies at Stonehill College.
The Gibson Peacock Prize for Creative Nonfiction
Awarded to the best creative nonfiction piece by an undergraduate student
Winner: Sharon Christner, “Tia Charito”
Contest judge Leland Cheuk writes: Sharon Christner’s “Tia Charito” is a stellar example of feature writing about the largely invisible heroes fighting this nation’s opioid epidemic. When Christner’s subject Charito Morales says, “out here there is no trauma unit, no maternity unit. You have to be your own hospital,” it’s a metaphor for the willful societal negligence that many Americans have come to embrace, an indifference that Morales quietly battles daily.
Second Place: Sabrina Qiao, “Lonely in the City”
Contest judge Leland Cheuk writes: Sabrina Qiao’s “Lonely in the City” not only details the author’s struggle with a rare autoimmune disease in a time when her adult life is just beginning, but Qiao skillfully also weaves in the story of her strained relationship with her father as he deals with his own life-threatening illness. This essay is emotional, is wise, and confronts mortality with refreshing honesty.
Third Place: Dillon Bergin, “Your Life as a Line Cook: Hungry, Hectic, and Handy”
Contest judge Leland Cheuk writes: Dillon Bergin’s “Your Life as a Line Cook: Hungry, Hectic, and Handy” does what Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential did—make you think twice about the people working 18-hour days for low wages making your fine dining meals. Bergin reminds us that for the line cook, there is no Chef’s Table Netflix music or foie gras or much sleep, for that matter.
About the judge: Leland Cheuk is the author of the story collection Letters from Dinosaurs (2016) and the novel The Misadventures of Sulliver Pong (2015), which was an Amazon National Bestseller in Asian American Literature and published in translation in China (2018). His newest novel No Good Very Bad Asian is forthcoming from C&R; Press in 2019. Cheuk’s work has been covered in The Paris Review, VICE, Poets and Writers, Electric Literature, The Millions, The Rumpus, and Asian American Writers Workshop, and has appeared in or is forthcoming in publications such as Salon, Catapult, Joyland Magazine, Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, [PANK] Magazine, among other outlets. He has been awarded fellowships and artist residencies at the MacDowell Colony, Hawthornden Castle, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Caldera, I-Park Foundation, and Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts. He is the fiction editor at Newfound Journal and the founder of the indie press 7.13 Books. He lives in Brooklyn and teaches at the Sarah Lawrence College Writing Institute. You can follow him on Twitter @lcheuk and at lelandcheuk.com.
The Parker Prize for Journalistic Writing
Awarded to the best newspaper or magazine article, feature story, exposé or other piece of investigative journalism (published or unpublished) by an undergraduate student
Winner: Annabelle Williams, “‘It’s Everything’: Bureaucracy, Abortion Protests, Prejudice, and Controversy in an Elite Pennsylvania Public School”
Contest judge Brooke Borel writes: It was hard to put down Annabelle’s piece, which chronicles an altercation between a Pennsylvania teacher and two young anti-abortion protestors as well as the aftermath. The story has key elements for a strong narrative: a compelling story with tension, interesting characters, a solid structure, and a connection to broader topical themes (in this case: education, freedom of speech, American politics, and mental health).
Second Place: Katrina Janco, “Life on the Autism Spectrum at Penn”
Contest judge Brooke Borel writes: In this reported essay, Katrina illuminates the challenges for students with autism on the University of Pennsylvania’s campus. The essay has a personal angle and draws, in part, from Katrina’s own experiences, which she supports with convincing data, student interviews, broader trends on inclusive campuses, and crisp and confident language.
Third Place: Naomi Elegant, “The 7,000-Mile Divide”
Contest judge Brooke Borel writes: Naomi’s compelling feature explores the realities at the University of Pennsylvania for Chinese students, who make up more than a third of the school’s international student body. Through a mix of statistics, interviews with Chinese students, and comments from faculty, Naomi shows how the school is trying—and in some cases, falling short—to serve these students.
About the judge: Brooke Borel is a journalist, editor, and author specializing in science and technology. She’s a senior editor at Undark Magazine and a contributing editor at Popular Science, and has also written for BuzzFeed News, The Guardian, The Atlantic, Scientific American, Medium, FiveThirtyEight, Slate, and elsewhere. In 2016, Borel was the Cissy Patterson fellow at the Alicia Patterson Foundation, where she wrote about pesticides and agriculture, and her work has also been supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. She teaches writing at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University and speaks on journalism and fact-checking both nationally and internationally. Her books are Infested: How the Bed Bug Infiltrated Our Bedrooms and Took Over the World and The Chicago Guide to Fact-Checking, both from the University of Chicago Press.
The Creative Writing Honors Thesis Prize
Awarded to the most outstanding honors thesis
Winners:
Daniel Finkel for “The Wichita Vortex”; advisor: Carmen Machado
Fiona Jensen-Hitch for “Mill Creek Re-Map”; advisor: Rachel Zolf
Sabrina Qiao for “Choosing to Live: A Parable of Family Illness”; advisor: Paul Hendrickson
About the award: Our judges have decided that each of these three projects articulates such a distinct sense of craft, form, method, and linguistic vitality that they will share this year's thesis prize. Each is a writing project that exceeds the boundaries of the undergraduate honors thesis program, that struck the panel as coherent and complete in its execution, and that shows maturity of vision and command of craft. Congratulations, Daniel, Fiona, and Sabrina!