2017 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: Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach
Contest judge Muriel Leung writes of Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach's "Letters to My Son, November 8th, 2016": "Remember, when half of your ancestors died, the other half / did the killing,” Dasbach writes in her poem, which reminds a child to be vigilant towards a history that traverses years of violence done to a people and to consider what it means to also be complicit in that violence. This is the burden of inheritance, but for the poet, it also becomes a form of resistance. Each word in this collection is stone, is a way to grieve, to remember, a way to say that beyond the memorial is the lived life, the life that a people must keep on living.
Second Place: Davy Knittle
Contest judge Muriel Leung writes: I’m delighted by the poems in this collection, which reveal so much through their humor as the lines wind across the page, throw us for a loop, and settle us back in again only to be uprooted once more. As clever as these poems are, they never deride the heart behind the speakers’ longing, whether for another or for a better self. This is a poet who understands the intimacy of a couplet, the slipperiness of desire within it and all that it can reveal within such a small space.
The College Alumni Society Poetry Prize
Awarded to the best original poetry by an undergraduate student
Winner: Carlos Price-Sanchez
Contest judge Muriel Leung writes: In poems like “[THE NEW ECONOMY],” a masterful poet bridges pop modernity, city life, and nature in this “nation-bag / full of teeth.” These poems are stocked with cultural knowledge that links family rituals to global identity politics, and in each turn, is so keenly aware not only of the geography of land, but also the geography of language and the page. These are stunning poems spun by truly adept hands, never didactic, and highly original—I cannot wait to see more from this poet in the future.
Second Place: Peter LaBerge
Contest judge Muriel Leung writes: Poems in this collection achieve great magnitude and weight through their capacity for examining the quiet resonances of one’s life. I’m so thoroughly moved by these works, which take us from a small town in Ohio to the heart of a young queer boy whose desire for lightning belongs to a hope for a world in which nature can be itself in all its unbridled glory. These poems know so much intimacy, such contemplative empathy, that they are in so many ways, the urgent poems we need right now.
Third Place: Connie Yu
Contest judge Muriel Leung writes: In these slotted prose poems that forgo punctuation in favor of the extended thought rendered through gaps and spaces, this poet plays with moments of rupture in memory, be it through language, one’s sexual identity, one’s preoccupation with war, or of contesting model minority myth-making. This poet sets the stakes high for theorizing the language in relation to body to identity. The logic of these poems do not flounder; rather, they keep us rapt in attention at each turn, completely mesmerized by their density, their argument, and their sway.
About the judge: Muriel Leung is the author of Bone Confetti (Noemi Press, 2016). Her poetry, fiction, and nonfiction can be found or is forthcoming in Drunken Boat, The Collagist, Fairy Tale Review, Ghost Proposal, Jellyfish Magazine, inter/rupture, and elsewhere. She is a recipient of a Kundiman fellowship and is a regular contributor to the Blood-Jet Writing Hour poetry podcast. She is also a poetry coeditor of Apogee Journal. Currently, she is pursuing her PhD in creative writing and literature at the University of Southern California.
The Phi Kappa Sigma Fiction Prize
Awarded to the best original short story by an undergraduate student
Winner: "End of the World" by Jeffrey Yang
Contest judge Sara Veglahn writes: I was hooked by the quiet understatement of the first few sentences of this strange and stunning story, and as a result, I completely trusted where I was being taken. Within this brief meditation on what it means to carve out a “pocket of existence” for oneself, there is the revelation that for some, it is the limits that offer solace, and for others it is the limitless. The ambiguity and multiplicity suggested by the ending is remarkable. This is a work of compressed emotion, of useful restraint, of how specificity and precision can offer an astonishing openness. I keep thinking about it.
Second Place: "2 for 1" by Gloria Yuen
Contest judge Sara Veglahn writes: Gloria Yuen’s “2 for 1” is a beautifully rendered narrative on family, identity, and what home means. It brings up the questions: What connects us? What divides us? And what happens when the ones to whom we should have the closest connection are the ones who seem to be the furthest away? Through subtle and elegant description, Yuen offers, in only a few pages, not only an examination of sibling rivalry, but also a revelation of the world outside ourselves and our place in it. Sophisticated, elegant, and profound.
Third Place: “An Incomplete List of Well-Intentioned Lies” by Julia Bell
Contest judge Sara Veglahn writes: I admire the edge that Julia Bell walks between humor and seriousness in her story “An Incomplete List of Well-Intentioned Lies.” The reader is placed in an almost fairytale-like realm, with uncles named Midas, a questionable swamp, a proliferation of snakes. Using the form of the vignette, the space that falls between the brief narratives becomes luminous with the unsaid. Calling to mind the novels of Marie Redonnet, Bell’s work offers a succinct account of a young woman held between knowing and unknowing, where the truth is always hovering below the surface.
Honorable Mentions
“walking” by Hannah Judd
“The House on Para Street” by Pritha Bhattacharyya
“Foreign Films” by Cameron Dichter
About the judge: Sara Veglahn’s novel The Ladies won the 2016 Noemi Press Book Award for Fiction and will be published in October 2017. Her novel The Mayflies was published by Dzanc Books in 2014. Her writing and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in Full Stop, Caketrain, Poor Claudia, Conjunctions, Octopus, Fence, Tarpaulin Sky, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in writing from the University of Massachusetts–Amherst and a PhD in literature and writing from the University of Denver, and lives and works in Denver.
The Judy Lee Award for Dramatic Writing
Awarded to a graduate or undergraduate student for the best script (stage, screen, television, or radio).
Winner: “Don’t Take Me Out” by Amanda Prager
Contest judge Madeleine George writes: This vivid, strange, delightful stoner comedy takes us into the underworld of crusty glamour shimmering behind the facade of an American college campus. This screenwriter has a sharp ear for language and the way young people use it, and her characters are compellingly real. The sly details she includes charm and delight—a whole world is contained in a drumstick stuck into a fire alarm—and she manages to mule in neo-transcendentalism and a Foucauldian critique of the surveillance state without rippling the surface of her well-constructed world. With the languid tempo of a Whit Stillman film, the chill specificity of The Big Lebowski, and the sweet satisfaction of an old-fashioned romantic comedy, this script feels like it’s forging a new genre even as it nods to its ancestors.
Second Place: “Birds of a Feather” by Liv Leigh Matlin
Contest judge Madeleine George writes: A sharp existentialist fable, “Birds of a Feather” is by turns frightening, surprising, and hilarious. This playwright understands what human bodies can do and be used for on stage—the visual language of gesture and stance is a particularly strong component of this script, even as the clever language games in the dialogue dazzle and disarm. There’s something genuinely scary about the blend of the banal, the scatalogical, and the corporate that this short but powerful play is exploring.
Third Place: “The Virtue of the Harvest” by Adam Ginsberg
Contest judge Madeleine George writes: This screenplay is a genre-bending, laugh-out-loud-funny quasi-historical satire slash political parable about ice harvesting in the 1850s—sort of! How the piece manages to feel both deeply researched and one hundred percent made up isn’t immediately obvious, but the writing throughout is confident, suspenseful, visually acute, quick-witted, and rhythmic. This writer has a devilishly smart way with words, and he’s a gripping storyteller, too.
Honorable Mentions:
“Man Up” by Jacob Barnes
“Beyond the Track” by Quan Lam and Seung-Hyun Chung
“Mad People” by Sarah Cho
About the judge: Madeleine George’s plays include The (curious case of the) Watson Intelligence (Pulitzer Prize finalist; Outer Critics Circle John Gassner Award), Seven Homeless Mammoths Wander New England (Susan Smith Blackburn finalist), Precious Little, and The Zero Hour (Jane Chambers Award, Lambda Literary Award finalist). She’s a founding member of the Obie Award–winning playwrights’ collective 13P (Thirteen Playwrights Inc.), the Mellon Playwright in Residence at Two River Theater in New Jersey, and a Fellow for Curriculum and Program Development at the Bard Prison Initiative at Bard College.
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: Nikhil Venkatesa, review of American Honey
Contest judge Ashley Kahn writes: The same nonstop, visual energy and breathless exuberance one would expect from a film that follows a ragtag group of post-adolescent, not-quite-adults journeying through America is captured in lines like: “[Director] Andrea Arnold is obsessed with animals: dogs, bees, birds, horses, cows, fireflies, a grasshopper, even a bear…” and “strip clubs, bars, county fairs, grocery outlets, and dollar stores…” There are insights as well that speak of the movie’s message, critiquing “a middle America fraught with poverty and hypocrisy…wealthy neighborhoods composed of designer homes and lush backyards…in stark contrast to the dingy motel rooms where the crew shacks up each night.” The review includes an understanding of Arnold’s other films, and how American Honey compares to similar coming-of-age tales that mix music and a flavors of cinema verité to portray the heartless American heartland.
Second Place: Angela Huang, review of Solange, A Seat at the Table
Contest judge Ashley Kahn writes: With an informed balance of Solange’s personal and musical history, and a deep understanding of her current creative efforts, this review explains a breakthrough recording to even a first-time fan’s satisfaction. It covers the primary points about what is clearly the artist’s most mature recording to date—its political and humanistic stance, its personal revelations and discoveries. At times, the language of the review itself becomes musical, as when the focus turns to a moment on the tune “Rise,” “a perfect prequel to an album all about falling, falling, falling—but soldiering on.” Or a line that is both lyrical and enticing: “the album is dipped in honey; it is remedial R&B; that goes down smooth like syrup.” With those few words, one can enjoy both the description as well as the music being described.
Third Place: Stephan Cho, Review of Moonlight and La La Land
Contest judge Ashley Kahn writes: An intriguing and ambitious think piece on why two films that have captivated critical and public acclaim might have both proven more successful had their respective directors traded genres—the musical (La La Land) being a drama, while Moonlight would have benefitted more with song and dance numbers. It’s a novel idea, and with insight and a sense of history and fun, Cho develops his argument, pointing out the scenes and players who could have made those changes happen effectively.
Honorable Mentions
Peter LaBerge, review of Ocean Vuong’s Night Sky With Exit Wounds
Ritwik Bhatia, review of Frank Ocean’s Endless
James Sheplock, review of King Cobra
About the judge: Ashley Kahn is a Grammy-winning American music historian, journalist, producer, and educator. He teaches at New York University’s Clive Davis Institute for Recorded Music; in 2014, Kahn coauthored the autobiography of Carlos Santana, titled The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story to Light, and he is acclaimed for his books on two legendary recordings: Kind of Blue by Miles Davis and A Love Supreme by John Coltrane. Kahn has held a variety of positions in the music business, as radio deejay, video producer, concert producer, road manager, and TV music editor, and is currently an adjunct professor at New York University, teaching various courses for the Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music in NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. His writing has garnered three ASCAP/Deems Taylor awards and three Grammy nominations, and in 2015, he was awarded a Grammy for his album notes to the John Coltrane release Offering: Live at Temple University.
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): Michaela Kotziers, translation of an excerpt from Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach (Middle High German)
Contest judge Fiona Sze-Lorrain writes: “The day you shot your first bird dead, / the sound of its song grew. / It started out a whistle, whispering through / leaves caught by your arrow’s test, / but then it rose into your breast / and ripped a hole between / what you had understood to mean / our world removed from history / and you, or where you should be.” This is an impressive rendering of a passage from German medieval poet and knight Wolfram von Eschenbach’s epic poem whose timelessness and lyrical intensity is felt via Michaela Kotziers’ conscientious use of rhymes, and her distinct yet modern sense of a narrative arc in traditional as well as free verse.
Winner (tie): Ariel Resnikoff, translation of four excerpts from “The House” by Avoth Yeshurun (Hebrew)
Contest judge Fiona Sze-Lorrain writes: Ariel Resnikoff’s translation of Israeli poet Avoth Yeshurun is dense, concise, diligent, well-researched, and surprisingly idiosyncratic. (As evoked in the first excerpt “the floor”: “now // one heap / resembles one. / each one, / technical & spiritual.”) It seeks to introduce, without didacticism, a much-appreciated bi/multi-cultural sensitivity and philosophical depth to Yeshurun’s sophisticated poetic vision, imaginings, and music.
Second Place (tie): Cristina Serban, translation of an excerpt from “This Is My Name” by Adonis (Arabic)
Contest judge Fiona Sze-Lorrain writes: Cristina Serban’s translation is at once compelling and revealing in its stark simplicity and elegant musicality. Says the poetic hero(ine): “I will call this city a cadaver / And I will call Syria’s trees grieving birds (Perhaps a flower or a / song / Will be born of this name).” Be it political or personal, the voice in this version of Adonis sings: it is self-restrained, vulnerable, and moving.
Second Place (tie): Devorah Fischler, translation of a chapter excerpt from The Animal by Rachilde (French)
Contest judge Fiona Sze-Lorrain writes: “The young woman, her feet curled around the ladder’s rung, head in the wind, leaned on her elbows, as if she were on a balcony. She did not see anything extraordinary, just a cat running away toward the nearest chimney.” The nineteenth-century French woman writer Rachilde deserves more contemporary readership in the English-language world. Devorah Fischler’s close, consistent reading of an excerpt from Rachilde’s novel The Animal is both an admirable work of interpretation and literary taste.
Third Place: Yehudith Dashevsky, translation of excerpts from “Requiem” by Anna Akhmatova (Russian)
Contest judge Fiona Sze-Lorrain writes: Yehudith Dashevsky honors Anna Akhmatova with a sincere study of her acclaimed elegy “Requiem”—”For them, I have woven a shroud out of words, / Out of their poor words, which I overheard. // Them—I remember, all the time, in every place, / New woes cannot drive them from memory’s space.” The emotional range in these poems and translations is arresting. Dashevsky’s translation is an experience that moves between the unsayables for both languages, resurrecting both the memory and the tragic.
Honorable Mention
Omar Khoury, translation of Mahmoud Darwish’s “Rita and the Rifle” (Arabic)
About the judge: Fiona Sze-Lorrain is a poet, literary translator, and zheng harpist who writes and translates in English, French, and Chinese. Her third poetry collection, The Ruined Elegance, out from Princeton, is a finalist for the 2016 Los Angeles Times Book Prize and chosen by Library Journal as one of the ”Best Books 2015: Poetry.” Her latest translation, contemporary Chinese poet-scenographer Yi Lu’s Sea Summit (Milkweed, 2016), is shortlisted for the Best Translated Book Award. Also the author of two previous titles, My Funeral Gondola (2013) and Water the Moon (2010), and several translations of contemporary Chinese, Taiwanese, and American poets, she lives in Paris.
The Gibson Peacock Prize for Creative Nonfiction
Awarded to the best creative nonfiction piece by an undergraduate student
Winner: “Dark House” by Peter LaBerge
Contest judge Colin Dickey writes: A haunting excavation of memory and identity—from its opening, poetic line, “Dark House” hooks the reader and doesn’t let go. The cascading vignettes through the years create a powerful sense of both dislocation and familiarity, all of which really helps capture the landscape and the personalities of this tiny town. This piece also taps into the hidden menace of the American small town: a sense of foreboding and unease is always lurking just beneath the veneer of suburban peace. Above all the writing, which is by turns spare and eloquent, carries the reader through this unsettling but beautiful dreamscape.
Second Place: “Notes on the Afterlives” by Keyla Cavdar
Contest judge Colin Dickey writes: The writing here really took my breath away: a beautiful elegy that moves back and forth through time and place. The writer does a stunning job of incorporating Turkish into the narrative, and maintaining a poetic sensibility in both languages. As a meditation on what it means to belong to a country, it could not be more timely, but this piece’s real strength is in the way it uses evocative writing to create a kaleidoscope of identity and self all in the same narrator.
Third Place: “On Ivy-League Dumpster Diving” by Sharon Christner
Contest judge Colin Dickey writes: This piece offers a fascinating and poignant glimpse into the writer’s double life. Frank and plainspoken, it nonetheless creates empathy for a figure who’s not only on the margins of her Ivy League culture, but also, as we learn in the final paragraphs, on the margins of the dumpster diving culture as well. Stuck between two extremes, the writer’s depiction of alienation and fleeting kinship stays with you long after you finish reading.
About the judge: Colin Dickey is the author, most recently, of Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places (Viking), as well as Cranioklepty: Grave Robbing and the Search for Genius and Afterlives of the Saints: Stories from the Ends of Faith. His work has appeared in The Believer, Lapham’s Quarterly, VICE, The Atlantic, Slate, and elsewhere. He is also the coeditor of The Morbid Anatomy Anthology. He currently teaches creative writing at National University.
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: “Untitled” by Rebecca Tan
Contest judge Tasneem Raja writes: Rebecca’s story presents a young person in crisis without flattening them into just that. We get to understand the big picture of her challenges through the small moments that make up her day-to-day. That’s hard to pull off without resorting to cinematic cliche, and I appreciate how Rebecca structured and told this story to lead us there.
Second Place: “Stateless Children in Hong Kong” by Casey Quackenbush
Contest judge Tasneem Raja writes: Casey’s story unpeels the many pressurized layers keeping this mother up at night, showing how bureaucracy and xenophobia and immigration policy are wreaking havoc on the most defenseless and blameless.
Third Place: “Bubble” by Caroline Harris
Contest judge Tasneem Raja writes: It’s hard to get people to sympathize with the affluent and the elite. This story challenges the reader to understand the ways in which well-off Silicon Valley teens in high-achieving households are just kids, after all, and unready for the enormous pressures that came with their station in life.
About the judge: Tasneem Raja writes for national magazines and journals, with a focus on culture and technology. A former senior editor at NPR, she launched a popular podcast exploring issues of identity and race with NPR’s Code Switch team. At Mother Jones, she specialized in data visualization and was part of a team that compiled the first-ever database of mass shootings in America. She’s a pioneer in the field of data-driven digital storytelling, a frequent speaker on issues of inclusion and diversity in the workplace, and a die-hard fan of alt weeklies, where she got her start as a local reporter. She lives in small-town East Texas with her husband and stepson.
The Creative Writing Honors Thesis Prize
Awarded to the most outstanding honors thesis
Winners:
Hannah Judd, for "Teeth/Not," advised by Max Apple
Pallavi Wakharkar, for "Holdings," advised by Beth Kephart
Connie Yu, for "open address," advised by Julia Bloch
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, Hannah, Pallavi, and Connie!