Undergraduate Contest Winners

 

2022

 

Celeste Turner Wright Poetry Prize

1st Place:  Bailey Harrison, “member that tulsa twilight”

2nd Place:  Kayleigh Norgord, “Ocean City”

Honorable Mention:  Chloe Gambill, “In the Kitchen”

 

Pamela Maus Contest in Creative Writing

Fiction

1st Place: Keerthi Lakshmanan, “Her Rani”

2nd Place: Rafael Viscarra, “Flight of 1000 Doves”

3rd Place: Hope Koonin, “Dead Stretch”

 

Poetry

1st Place: Anna Kristina Moseidjord, “on my grandmother’s suicidal tendencies” “lover” “brookpark road” “On Europe” “egg” and “how it looks from everywhere else”

2nd Place: Cami Rothmuller, “Magicicada (Periodical Cicada)” “Idolatry” “Groundwater” “Chrysina Woodii (Wood’s Jewel Scarab)” “Nightwalk” and “The Composer”

3rd Place: Jesse Saldivar, “July 4th Vacation” “ Where the Walls Meet” “Psyche Word” “Edifice of Nature” “Terrible Song” and “The Drop of Water in Red Light, by Shiva Ahmadi”

 

Honorable Mentions:

Josephine Clay, “Love Song (Hibernation)

Kiley Egan, “Forever Monsoon”

Candela Graciarena, “Mi Tesoro”

Jill Kraus, “Because we’re family”

Spencer Rico, “Things to Remember when Working”

 

Diana Lynn Bogart Prize for Fiction

1st Place:  Faith Arnett, “Like Sleeping Dogs,” “Gold Turkey,” “Gen Z Guernica”

2nd Place:  Jacob Anderson, “Miss Blanchard’s House”

3rd Place:  Cyan McMillan, “Counterrelational” and “The Young Man’s Taste”

 

Elliot Gilbert Award for the Best Creative Writing Honors Project

Anna Kristina Moseidjord, “The Odd Survival”

 

Elliot Gilbert Award for the Best Honors Undergraduate Critical Thesis

Anna Hayden, “Hester Pulter and Domestic Alchemy: Women’s Imagined Political Autonomy in 17th Century England”

 

Peter Hays Writing Prize

Emilie Sung, “To Love, or not to Love (the chicken)”

 

Lois Ann Lattin Rosenberg English Department Essay Prize

1st Place:  Eli Martin, “Bloom as ‘Collector’ in James Joyce’s Ulysses”

 

Honorable Mentions:

Emma Tolliver, “Bittersweet Battlegrounds: The Conflict of Consuming the Other in a Transnational World”

Claire Volkmann, “The Angelic Ideal in Paradise Lost”

 

Lois Ann Lattin Rosenberg Outstanding Graduating Senior Award

Fiona Davis & Eli Elster

 

Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Research

Mimi McMillan, “’Like Footsteps Upon Wool’: Philology, Ecology, and Tennyson’s Early Lyrics" under the direction of Elizabeth Miller

 

2021

 

Celeste Turner Wright Poetry Prize 

1st Place: Damieka Marrie Thomas, "Progress," "Keepers of the Land," and "White Girl" 

2nd Place: Matthew Pimley, “Hamburger Heart” 

Honorable Mention: Gabriel Ketron, “Untitled”

 

Pamela Maus Contest in Creative Writing

Fiction

1st Place: Lauren Hwang-Finkelman, "Pure," "May, 2020," and "Remains" 

2nd Place: Matthew Pimley, "The Taste of Silt"

3rd Place: Cheyenne Renee Wiseman, "Face Value" and "The Enchantress of Meade Creek"

Honorable Mention: Jakob Johnson, "A Convergence of Remnants”

 

Poetry

1st Place: Anne Thiselton-Dyer, "The Natural Look," "Wonder," "The Passenger," and "Guard"

2nd Place: Kristina Anna Moseidjord, "Sundowning in the Wind Rivers," "falling in love, in WY again," "bizzed," and "grief as it has been to me"

3rd Place: Lauren Hwang-Finkelman, "Suspect/Kin" and "When My Mother Gets Mad at Me"

 

Diana Lynn Bogart Prize for Fiction

1st Place: Teja Dusanapudi, "A Gentle Earth" and "A Study on Pleasure"; Lauren Hwang-Finkelman, "Remains," "May, 2020," and "The Year of the Rat"; & Damieka Marrie Thomas, “Heat Visions” (tied)

 

Elliot Gilbert Award for the Best Creative Writing Honors Project

1st Place: Elizabeth Mercado’s “Reconocida” & Matthew Pimley’s “Collection of Short Stories and an Essay” (tied)

Honorable Mention: Lauren Hwang-Finkelman

 

Elliot Gilbert Award for the Best Honors Undergraduate Critical Thesis

1st Place: Mimi McMillan, “‘Like Footsteps Upon Wool:’ Philology, Ecology, & Tennyson’s Early Lyrics”

Honorable Mention: Caitlyn Liu, “Chinese American History and Layered Storytelling in Maxine Hong Kingston’s China Men”

 

Peter Hays Writing Prize

Audrey Luo, “The Hero That Never Was: The Case of Woo Suk Hwang” & Serene Liu, “The Beautiful Elusive Bird” (tied)

 

Lois Ann Lattin Rosenberg English Department Essay Prize

1st Place: Teja Dusanapudi, “Paradise Aborted”

2nd Place: Claire Volkmann, “Drawing from Imagination” 

Honorable Mention: Mimi McMillan, “Whitman’s and Dickinson’s Ecology of the Grave” 

 

Lois Ann Lattin Rosenberg Outstanding Graduating Senior Award

Ruth Christopher

 

Honorable Mentions:

Karen Kay

John Wright

 

2020

 

Celeste Turner Wright Poetry Prize

1st Place:  Meredith Herndon, “On Monday There Were Consequences”

Honorable Mention: Saba Keramati, “Feast”

 

Pamela Maus Contest in Creative Writing

Fiction

1st Place: Lauren Hwang-Finkelman, “On the Table,” "Science Says Love Makes Us Crazy," and “When I Said We Should Sleep with Other People”

2nd Place: Matthew Pimley, “The Gleaners”

3rd Place: Jakob Johnson, “The Repeat Bar” & Nicolas Rago, “When Old Men Tell of Generations” (tied)

 

Poetry

1st Place: Caitlyn Woodall, “movie date”

2nd Place: Anna Kristina Moseidjord, “hundred dollar whore”

3rd Place: Melanie Manuel, “We are made of broken tongues” and “dandelion” & Luis Varela, “The Collective Madness” (tied)

 

Diana Lynn Bogart Prize for Fiction

1st Place: Timothy Lalonde, "The Bobcat Fire" and "Theory of Patrick"

2nd Place: Ian Sterns, “Lavender Masks for Breathing in Haze”

3rd Place: Mikaela Dow, “Infestation” and “Dredge”

 

Elliot Gilbert Award for the Best Creative Writing Honors Project

Alyssa Henderson, “A Note From a Hoarder,” under the direction of Pam Houston & Mary Qin, “MY STORY IN ODI ET AMO,” under the direction of Katie Peterson (tied)

 

Elliot Gilbert Award for the Best Honors Undergraduate Critical Thesis

Hannah Cadigan-Carranza, “‘As If It Were Myself’: Unnatural Narratology and Utopian Affects in News from Nowhere” under the direction of Elizabeth Miller, & Isabel Realyvasquez, “Georgic Scale-Shifting: Cultivating Climate Knowledge in John Philips’s Cyder” under the direction of Tobias Menely (tied)

 

Lois Ann Lattin Rosenberg English Department Essay Prize

1st Place: Perrin Swanlund, “It’s a Cuck-Cuck-Cuck World”

2nd Place: Aimee LaGrandeur, “Witches of Britannia: Nationalism and the White Cliffs of Dover in White is for Witching”

 

Lois Ann Lattin Rosenberg Outstanding Graduating Senior Award

1st Place: Jumana Esau

 

Honorable Mentions:

Bonnie Fleury-Masterman

Alyssa Henderson

Aimee LaGrandeur

 

Ina Coolbrith Memorial Poetry Prize 

1st Place: Anthony DiCarlo, “Catch me coming south, darling,” “Poem #90,” “Something for your hands,” “Consider me one of the delighted,” and “Poem about bees, 2 AM, summer night with wind”

 

Finalists:

Joseph Nabor, "A Walk in the Sonoran Desert"

Michaela Poynor-Haas, “Harmony of a Farmer’s Market,” “So Beautiful to Forget,” “Love As: Understanding,” “Mama Takes Baby out of Alabama,” and “Animal Instinct”

 

2019

 

Celeste Turner Wright Poetry Prize

1st Place: Anthony DiCarlo, “I have never seen anything like this-," “A Hangover,” “someday or another,” “Reasons to Drink: #1,” and “For Fiver and Cassandra” 

 

Pamela Maus Contest in Creative Writing

Fiction

1st Place: Bailey Crocoll, “Name Sign”

2nd Place: Kaija Holland, “Summer”

3rd Place: Gabriel Mulcaire, “In Public”, “Sunday Night,” and “Boiling”

 

Poetry

1st Place: Charlene Yang, “love in the fisheye,” “the logic of benthos,” “gate,” and “sum”

2nd Place: Eman Abraham, “Pre-teen in the I.E.,” “Fuck This Bar/Gin Intercepts the Last Sleep,” “From Below,” “Wool Women,” “Virgo Sun/Virgo Moon,” and “Econo Lodge”

3rd Place: Anna Kristina Moseidjord, “6 poems make an identity crisis”

 

Diana Lynn Bogart Prize for Fiction

1st Place: Cheyenne Wiseman, “The Drowning"

2nd Place: Bailey Crocoll, “Name Sign”

 

Elliot Gilbert Award for the Best Creative Writing Honors Project

Jennifer Thornton, "The Second Story Bathroom Girls” under the direction of honors advisor Greg Glazner

 

Elliot Gilbert Award for the Best Honors Undergraduate Critical Thesis

1st Place: Haley Spanier, "Between Social Dependence and Social Integration: The Post-WWII Existential Bildungsroman” under the direction of Mark Jerng

Honorable Mention: Emily Stack, "'The little O, the earth’: Ecology, Theatrical Land, and Shakespeare’s Tragedies” under the direction of Gina Bloom

 

Peter Hays Writing Prize

Lisa Malins, “‘Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations’: Star Trek as a Model of Neurodiversity”

 

Lois Ann Lattin Rosenberg English Department Essay Prize

1st Place: Maryna Imas, “The Occult Context of Heinlein’s Fiction: Sex, Magic and Quantum Mechanics”

 

Honorable Mentions:

Teja Dusaapudi, “Tongues Forked and Splintered: The Snake as a Conduit for Divine Connection”

Emily Stack, “Wild Colonial Boy: “‘Gone Girl’ and the Uses of Contemporary Irish-American Identity”

 

Lois Ann Lattin Rosenberg Outstanding Graduating Senior Award

Megan West

 

Ina Coolbrith Memorial Poetry Prize Finalists

Anthony DiCarlo, “Bernini’s Daphne,” “Poem #29,” “A Hangover,” “upon the Field of Mars,” “November,” “Fundamental and Overtone,” “To a Gull,” and “Little Planet”

Ashley Kim, “Hardening”

Jarrett Rogers, “God’s Order,” “Modern Warfare,” “Death Valley,” “Goodbye, my love,” “Ciancetti,” “The Wrong Men for the Show,” and “All Reformation in Diesel Politics”

 

2018

 

Celeste Turner Wright Poetry Prize

1st Place: Kristin George Bagdanov

Honorable Mention: Namu Ju

 

Pamela Maus Contest in Creative Writing

Fiction

1st Place: Kelsey Owen

2nd Place: Isaac Flores

 

Poetry

1st Place: Gabriella Buckner

2nd Place: Hosanna Rubio

 

Diana Lynn Bogart Prize for Fiction

1st Place: Dylan Hendrickson, “Perfect Refraction”

 

Honorable Mentions:

Cheyenne Wiseman, “Wax Heart”

Brittany Wilson, “Sugarcane”

 

Elliot Gilbert Award for the Best Creative Writing Honors Project

Kelsey Owen

 

Elliot Gilbert Award for the Best Honors Undergraduate Critical Thesis

Megan West, “Bertha Mason and the Politics of Feeling”

Honorable Mention: Emma Hoppough, “Silent Talk – Transforming Private Pain and Public Healing in Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak”

 

Lois Ann Lattin Rosenberg English Department Essay Prize

1st Place: Jacqueline Gordon, “Shamela as an Antidote to Emulation Anxiety”

2nd Place: Emily Stack, “Keeps you Reminded: Sex/Gender Instability and Puritan Criticism in ‘As You Like It’”

 

Lois Ann Lattin Rosenberg Outstanding Graduating Senior Award

Sofia Molodanof

 

Honorable Mentions:

Amanda Shores

Marissa Trujillo

 

2017

 

Celeste Turner Wright Poetry Prize

1st Place: Jamil Jan Kochai, “12:34”

Honorable Mention: Aimee Lim

 

Pamela Maus Contest in Creative Writing

Fiction

1st Place: Emily Masuda

Runner Up: Aimee Lim

2nd Runner Up: Alannah Clark

 

Poetry

1st Place: Robert Ohlstrom 

Runner Up: Jordan Ranft

 

Diana Lynn Bogart Prize for Fiction

1st Place: Kelsey Owen, “The Elephant” and “Let Me Show You Where It Hurts”

2nd Place: Loretta Pesola, “Checking Out”

3rd Place: Aimee Lim, “What Ails Thee, Charlotte Wan?”

 

Honorable Mentions:

Daniel Langford, “Fixing the Fence”

Janet Son, “Prometheus Underground,” “Tête-à- Tête,” and “In the Waiting Room”

 

Elliot Gilbert Award for the Best Creative Writing Honors Project

Irina Haack, “Conversations with Sam” under the direction of Pam Houston

 

Elliot Gilbert Award for the Best Honors Undergraduate Critical Thesis

Lauren Rudewicz, “Glorious Creatures: Sympathy and the Aestheticization of Suffering in Shelley’s Frankenstein” under the direction of Seeta Chaganti and Anna Uhlig

 

Lois Ann Lattin Rosenberg English Department Essay Prize

1st Place: Emily Stack, “Came From a Woman, Got Our Name From a Woman: Female Bodies as Sites of Identity, History, and Narrative in Absalom, Absalom!”

2nd Place: Arianna Barzman-Grennan, “The Textuality of the Subject/Other Dichotomy in Othello”

 

Lois Ann Lattin Rosenberg Outstanding Graduating Senior Award

Emily Masuda

 

Ina Coolbrith Poetry Memorial Prize Finalists

Roy Magat

Arvind Reddy

 

2016

 

Celeste Turner Wright Poetry Prize

1st Place: Lauren Swift

Honorable Mention: Roy Magat

 

Pamela Maus Contest in Creative Writing


Fiction

1st Place: Kelsey Owen

2nd Place: Denise Castro

3rd Place: Adrienne Bergen

 

Honorable Mentions
:

Michael Clogston


Amelia Fink


Gabriella Mercier


Anita Yu




Poetry

1st Place: Sydney Choi

2nd Place: Kevin Yotsoubanh

3rd place: Ian Dickerson


 

 

Diana Lynn Bogart Prize for Fiction

1st Place: Hannah Carroll for “The Sink”


2nd Place: Jonathan Lee for “Silver Dollars,”
 Kelsey Owen for “On the Backs of Teeth,” & Brian Wright for “In Hawai’i” (tied)

 

Elliot Gilbert Award for the Best Creative Writing Honors Project

Courtney (Elfie) Nelson, “Somehow Hours” & Melissa Dittrich, “Alright for Now”
 (tied)

 

Elliot Gilbert Award for the Best Honors Undergraduate Critical Thesis

Austin Lim, “‘Money is Money’: Economies of Urban Crime and International Exchange in The Beetle” & Grace Gordon, “Gertrude Stein: The Mathematical Narrative” (tied)

 

Lois Ann Lattin Rosenberg English Department Essay Prize

1st Place: Mason Harper, “The Monumental Task: Considering a Racialized Voice”

2nd Place: Brian Wright, “The Crying of Lot 49 and the American Car”

 

Lois Ann Lattin Rosenberg Outstanding Graduating Senior Award

Austin Lim

 

Ina Coolbrith Poetry Memorial Prize Finalists

Ian Dickerson

Devon Houtz

Nicholas Tolfa

 

 

2015

 

Celeste Turner Wright Poetry Prize

1st Place: Lissa Miller

 

Pamela Maus Contest in Creative Writing

Fiction

1st Place: Aaron Paul & Kimberly Sims (tied)

2nd Place: Tammy Lee & Amanda Ong (tied)

 

Poetry

1st Place: Akira Kumamoto

2nd Place: Nawid Ahray

3rd Place: Sydney Choi

 

 

Diana Lynn Bogart Prize for Fiction

1st Place: Anita Yu & Emily Masuda (tied)

2nd Place: Nicholas Troughton

3rd Place: Iris Bloomfield

 

Honorable Mentions:


Mason Harper

Julia Baker

 

Elliot Gilbert Memorial Prize for the Best Honors Critical Thesis

Margaret Gonzalez, “Feigning Ophelia: Performed Madness and Female Authority”

 

Elliot Gilbert Memorial Prize for Best Honors Creative Project

Emily Nicol, “Trust Me, I am Okay”

 

Lois Ann Lattin Rosenberg Outstanding Graduating Senior Award

Mitchell Snyder & Akira Kumamoto

 

Lois Ann Lattin Rosenberg English Department Essay Prize

1st place: Alannah Clark, "This is OUR Time: Postmodernist Struggle in 1980's Teen Films"

2nd place: Brian Wright "The Black Knight's Veiled Death in Chaucer's Book of Duchess" & Rebecca Fong, "Mortimer in Henry IV, Part I: The Lover as an Unfit Leader" (tied)

 

Ina Coolbrith Poetry Memorial Prize

Honorable Mention: Antony Fangary

 

Finalists:

Iris Bloomfield

Akira Kumamoto

 

2014

 

Celeste Turner Wright Poetry Prize

1st Place: Mary Katherine Nielsen

 

Pamela Maus Contest in Creative Writing

Fiction

1st Place: Christina Fries

2nd Place: Joanna Ng

 

Honorable Mentions: Laurel Carney & Isabel Moniz (tied)

 

Poetry

1st Place: Ester Yun

2nd Place: Emily Nicol

 

Honorable Mentions:

Joanna Ng

Isabel Moniz

 

Diana Lynn Bogart Prize for Fiction

1st Place: Christina Fries

2nd Place: Ian Koller

3rd Place: Jeffrey-Annguye Le

 

Honorable Mentions:

Angela Parnay

Emily Masuda

Seychelle Steiner

 

Lois Ann Lattin Rosenberg English Department Essay Prize

1st Place: Annika Cunningham

2nd Place: Ben Kelly

 

Lois Ann Lattin Rosenberg Outstanding Graduating Senior Award

Annika Cunningham & Laurel Carney

 

Elliot Gilbert Award for the Best Creative Writing Honors Project

Christina Fries

 

Elliot Gilbert Award for the Best Honors Undergraduate Critical Thesis

Katelan Bowden

 

Ina Coolbrith Memorial Poetry Prize Finalists

Sergio Aguilar

Wendah Alvarez

Ester Yun

 

2013

 

Celeste Turner Wright Poetry Prize

1st Place: Ester Yun

 

Honorable Mentions:

Peter Neeley

Matt Stalcup 

 

Pamela Maus Contest in Creative Writing

Fiction

1st Place: Laurel Carney

2nd Place: Marisa Wohlschlaeger & Dominic Booth (tied)

 

Poetry

1st Place: Toshii Casey

2nd Place: Marisa Wohlschlaeger

 

Honorable Mention: Emily Nicol

 

Diana Lynn Bogart Prize for Fiction

1st Place: Chelsea Keane

2nd Place: Neha Palacherla

3rd Place: Christina Fries

 

Honorable Mentions:

Akira Kumamoto

Ben House

 

Elliot Gilbert Award for the Best Creative Writing Honors Project

Samantha Mandell

 

Elliot Gilbert Award for the Best Honors Undergraduate Critical Thesis
Dominic Booth & Annika Cunningham (tied)

 

Lois Ann Lattin Rosenberg English Department Essay Prize

1st Place: Jenna Christophersen

2nd Place: Annika Cunningham

 

Lois Ann Lattin Rosenberg Outstanding Graduating Senior Award

Claire Shalinsky

 

Ina Coolbrith Memorial Poetry Prize Finalists

Sergio Aguilar

Neha Palacherla

Marisa Wohlschlaeger