MFA Program Awards Major Departmental Prizes!

Check out the 2011 Academy of American Poets Prize & Katherine Anne Porter Fiction Prize Winners!

The MFA Program in Creative Writing is pleased to announce the winners of the 2011 Academy of American Poets Prize and Katherine Anne Porter Fiction Prize.

Maurice Manning judged the Academy of American Poets Prize.  Manning is the author of four collections of poetry, and was awarded the 2009 Hanes Poetry Award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. His first book, Lawrence Booth's Book of Visions, was selected by W. S. Merwin for the Yale Series of Younger Poets. Manning, a former writing fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, teaches at Indiana University and Warren Wilson College.

And Michael Dirda, our Petrou Reader in Residence, judged the Katherine Anne Porter Fiction Prize.  Dirda is a columnist for the Washington Post’s “Book World."  While here, he is teaching an undergraduate course titled "The Classic Adventure Novel" and visiting undergraduate courses.

First Place in poetry was awarded to Ena Djordjevic.  And Honorable Mentions were given to Jessica Dyche and Amy Katzel.

And the First Place fiction writer was Andrew Marsh, with Jacqueline Orlando and Heather Zadig honorably mentioned.

Congratulations, MFAs!

(The winners will read in the Writers Here & Now Student Prize Reading on Wednesday, May 4th, at 7 p.m. in the Ulrich Recital Hall here in Tawes.  Please join us for the reading!)