Announcing the 2024 Creative Writing Prize Winners
We are very proud to announce the winners of the 2024 Creative Writing Prizes. Warm and hearty congratulations to these students!
Academy Of American Poets Prize: Prettystar Lopez
For Prettystar Lopez, a senior Creative Writing Concentrator, Latin American Studies double major, and Music minor, this is the second year of receiving the Academy of American Poets Prize in a row — no small feat! Unlike her piece from last year, which was an original poem, Prettystar’s submission for this year consists of a poetic collage of writers and poets that speak to her lived experiences, which she then performed and recorded over a musical track. Her writing practice began in high school as a spoken word poet, and continues into a hybrid exploration of music, poetry, and her identity as a Dominican-American woman. Outside of her work as a writer, Prettystar is a musician, producer, and DJ, though she is consistently working to bridge the gap between the two art forms.
The Bernice Kilduff White & John J. White Creative Writing Prize: Julia Patterson
Julia, a Creative Writing Concentrator at Rose Hill, submitted an abridged version of a short story titled “Fur Elise” — a queer reimagining of the classical myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. The image for the story came to her after a prompt by Writer-In-Residence Prof. Gerardo Sámano Córdova as part of his Fiction Writing class. Julia is predominantly a fiction writer, but her work has a tendency to speak to her own life. “I do feel like certain things I go through have this heightened sense of disconnection from reality,” she told me in a phone interview when asked about her inspiration. “Emotions feel so big they become magical.”
The Margaret Lamb / Writing To The Right-Hand Margin Prize: Allison Schneider
A sophomore English major at Rose Hill, Allison is an avid reader and writer. Her submission for the prize, a short story titled “Hunger,” is heavily inspired by her Catholic upbringing and the rich history of religious practice and mysticism, as well as Catholic writers like Flannery O’Connor. She first began to conceptualize the story while visiting the chapel at Rose Hill, and subsequently workshopped it in Prof. Sarah Gambito’s Intro to Creative Writing class. Being enrolled in the class allowed Allison to prioritize her writing practice, and participate in her very first workshop!
The Reid Family Prize: Wing Tan Lai
This year’s winner of the Reid Family Prize is international student Wing Tang Lai, who is currently an English PhD candidate at Rose Hill. A departure from literary work, her submission is a collection of photos documenting New York residents of different backgrounds. In her artist statement, Wing wrote that the work “expresses the invisible distances and alienation that individuals can experience in such a diverse and melodious yet paradoxically unforgiving city.” She feels connected to this year’s Reid Writer Cornelius Eady through the emphasis on community and hope in the face of injustice, cruelty, and bureaucracy. You can find her photography on Instagram @poignantphotos.