The Department of Literatures in English is host to many gifted student writers and teachers. Thanks to the generosity of various donors, annual prizes are awarded for outstanding work in poetry, fiction, research, critical writing, and instruction. We are pleased to announce our 2020 - 2021 student award winners below.
Teaching Awards
The Joseph F. Martino '53 Lectureship in Undergraduate Teaching, which supports English undergraduate student seminars offering some form of a literary historical survey in the framework of a writing course, will be held by Olivia Milroy Evans for the 21-22 academic year.
The Martin Sampson Teaching Fellowship acknowledges the importance of one of the most vital parts of the profession of literature: the teaching of writing and reading to undergraduates. This year’s recipients were graduate students Philippa Chun, Ariel Estrella, Elisabeth Strayer, as well as MFA Lecturer Yessica Martinez.
The Shin Yong-Jin/Harry Falkenau Graduate Teaching Fellowship, for demonstrated excellence in scholarship and teaching, was awarded to Joseph Miranda for the 2021-2022 academic year.
Graduate Research Awards
The Alan Young-Bryant Memorial Graduate Award in Poetry was awarded to Marty Cain, Olivia Milroy Evans, and Seth Strickland.
A David L. Picket '84 Summer Grant was awarded to Ben Fried.
The David L. Picket '84 Summer Fellowship in Creative Writing was awarded to graduate students: Lily Codera, Briel Felton, Elisavet Makridis, Elie Piha, Zahid Rafiq, Alice Rhee, and Bobby Romero.
The James McConkey Master of Fine Arts Creative Writing Award for Summer Support, established by his enduringly grateful student Len Edelstein '59, was awarded to graduate student Elie Piha.
The M. H. Abrams Summer Graduate Fellowship, which provides a summer stipend to support work towards completion of an English dissertation, was awarded to Gary Slack.
The Truman Capote PhD Writer’s Award, providing summer fellowships for PhD or Joint MFA/PhD students in English who are also poets or fiction writers, was awarded to Noah Lloyd and Elisabeth Strayer.
Undergraduate Thesis Awards
The M. H. Abrams Undergraduate Thesis Prize winner was: Laura DeMassa, “The Violent Sovereign: State Power and Execution in William Shakespeare’s 'Henry V' and Thomas Nashe’s 'The Unfortunate Traveller.'” Honorable mentions were awarded to: Caroline Chun, “'Nervous Conditions' and the Collusion of Patriarchal and Colonial Structures of Power”; Jane Glaser, “‘Wanting Love’s Majesty to Strut’: Distorted Masculinity in Shakespeare’s 'King Richard III' and Vince Gilligan’s 'Breaking Bad'”; Rebecca Marratta, “Incarnating Feminine Sound into Written Elegy: A Reading of Classical References in the Fabric of Virginia Woolf’s, 'To the Lighthouse'”; and Paola Méndez García, “The Fourth Dimension of a Novel: Embodying Language in Prose Fiction.”
Writing Awards
The Arthur Lynn Andrews Prize graduate student winners were: 1st place, Michael Lee for “Ordforråd”; 2nd place, Sophia Veltfort for “Ex-Lover”; and an honorable mention was awarded to Zahid Rafiq for “Crows.” The Arthur Lynn Andrews Prize undergraduate winners were: 1st place, Shriya Perati for “Strangers”; 2nd place, Emma Eisler for “Verge”; and an honorable mention was awarded to Hanna Carney for “Bitter Grounds.”
The Barnes Shakespeare Prize was awarded to undergraduate student: Ramya Yandava for “’You Know My Mother Lives’: Maternal Malevolence in Shakespeare’s English Histories.” Honorable mentions were awarded to Claire Deng for “The Poet and the Player: 'Hamlet' as a Meta-Play” and Aubry Dyckman for “The Disruption of Legitimacy and Kingship in 'Richard II.'”
The Corson-Browning Poetry Prize was awarded to graduate student India Hackle for "Eating Her Own Tail" and undergraduate student Emma Eisler for "An Ode to Wholeness." An honorable mention was awarded to graduate student Michael Lee for "Norway's Iron Road."
The Dorothy Sugarman Poetry Prize was awarded to undergraduate student Vivian Jiang for her poem, "how it will feel." An honorable mention was awarded to undergraduate student Gillian Harrill for "The Archer."
The George Harmon Coxe Award for Fiction was awarded to undergraduate students: 1st Place winner Jenna Fields for "Marking the Wall"; 2nd Place winner Jack Mindich for "Sluggers"; and an honorable mention to Caroline Johnson for "Dive."
The George Harmon Coxe Award for Poetry was awarded to undergraduate students: 1st Place winner Emma Bernstein for "quarantine love song"; 2nd Place winner Isabel Frabotta for "Thoughts from a Very Long Drive"; and an honorable mention to Katie Zhang for "Mere Memories."
The Guilford Essay Prize was awarded to both Esmeralda Arrizón-Palomera for “The Trope of the Papers: The Coloniality of Citizenship and the Turn to the Undocumented in Black and Chicana Feminist Thought” and Grace Catherine Greiner for “Vibrant 'Matere': Chaucer, Lydgate, and the Late-Medieval Poetics of Materiality.”
The Moses Coit Tyler Award, for the best essay by a graduate or undergraduate student in the fields of American History, literature, or folklore, was awarded to graduate student Molly MacVeagh for “All Together Now: 'Ducks, Newburyport' and Climate Anxiety’s Molecular Form” and graduate student Alec Pollak for “Theorizing in Narrative Form: Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston, and the Telos of Black Women’s Literary History.”
The Robert Chasen Memorial Poetry Prize was awarded to: 1st place, graduate student Mackenzie Donnelly for "Seven Poems (Still Life With Fruit Fork)"; 2nd place, graduate student Mackenzie Berry for "Hymns of Gone"; and an honorable mention to graduate student Marty Cain for "Four Poems."
