On Friday, April 20, the Department of English held its annual Scholarship and Writing Awards Ceremony to honor student award winners and graduating seniors. The awards and scholarships, which mean so much to the students who receive them, are made possible only by the generosity of our donors. A few were in attendance: Kathleen Connor, Marsha and Mark Goldsmith Kamin, Leslie and Hillary Keyes, Marion Ringe, and Kimberly Williams.

Creative Writing Awards & Scholarships

Judith Siegel Pearson Award
First Place: Kathleen O'Neill,"Silencing the Nightingale"
Second Place: Connor Newton,“’You are mine/You are mine/You are mine’: Movement and Possession in Toni Morrison’s Beloved”

Phillip Lawson Hatch, Jr. Memorial Award
First Place: Benjamin Turner, “I Wrote This When You Weren’t Looking”
Second Place: Ariel Mokdad, “Olives and Butterflies”
Honorable Mentions: Isaac Pickell, “there is nothing you’ll let me forget”; Sara Jayyousi ,“bloody chalk outline”

John Clare Award in Poetry
First Place: Benjamin Turner, “On the Roof”
Second Place: Alexandra Biedenbach, “The Body and Other Unmentionables”
Honorable Mentions: Isaac Pickell, “chattel”; Lynette Lenk, “aging question”; Sara Jayyousi, “thought rot”

Tompkins Award (Nonfiction)
First Place: Renée McKendrick, “Packing Up Vinyl”
Second Place: Sara Jayyousi, “An Ode to Oral Fixation”
Honorable Mentions: Benjamin Turner, “Popcorn”; Delani Degrosky, “Going to the VA with a Buddhist Monk”; Nushrat Rahman, “Growing Space in Detroit: Immigrant Women and Urban Gardening"

Tompkins Award (Fiction)
First Place: Joseph Martinez, “Tennessee Dirt
Second Place:Connor Newton, “Chirping Underwater”
Honorable Mentions: Alexandra Biedenbach, “Digging”; Benjamin Turner, “Chapohill

Tompkins Award (Drama)
First Place: Ariel Mokdad, “Couplets and Contains a Body Part”
Second Place: Bridgette Jordan, “Because”
Honorable Mention: Benjamin Turner, “Crockpot Chronicles”

The Christopher T. Leland Endowed Scholarship in Creative Writing
Minahel Munir

The Daniel Keyes Family Graduate Scholarships in Creative Writing
Poetry: Robert Laidler
Nonfiction: Laura Kraftowitz
Fiction: Joseph Martinez

The Loughead-Eldredge Endowed Scholarship in Creative Writing
Undergraduates: Briget Gibbons, Joseph Gjelaj, Nathaniel Nash, Amal Rass
Graduates: Cheyenne Hicks, Connor Newton, Stephen Snyder

The Stephen H. Tudor Memorial Scholarship in Creative Writing
Victor Shaw

Undergraduate Scholarships & Awards

The Joseph J. & Mary E. Yelda Endowed Merit Scholarship for English
Rachel Hackett, Jacob Haffey, Elsa Nilaj, Steven Proudfoot, Amal Rass, Nicole Saez, Amal Shukr, Avery Zimmerman

The Gilbert R. & Patricia K. Davis Endowed Merit Scholarship
Jacquelyn Azar, Lynette Lenk, Rochelle Stevenson

The Marion K. Ringe Scholarship
Hamad Ali

The Dustin Rose Memorial Scholarship
Cham Smadi

The Frank X. Williams Memorial Annual Scholarship
Lynette Lenk, Renée McKendrick

Phi Beta Kappa
Delani Anne DeGrosky, Ki Lee Shannon O'Brien, Nushrat Rahman, and Amber Marie Taylor

Special Undergraduate Awards

The Undergraduate Best Essay Award 
Ki Lee O’Brien 
"The Cakewalk: Dance and Racial Identity in Charles Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition"

Distinguished Graduating Senior Award
Delani Degrosky

Service Achievement Award
Julia Hill

The Paul and Barbara Couture Scholarship in Rhetoric and Composition
Melinda Myers

The Thomas R. Jasina Endowed Graduate Scholarship in English
Mark Lane

The Terrance King Endowed Memorial Fellowship in English
Catherine Donaldson and Nadia Mohammad

The Albert Feigenson Scholarship
Undergraduate: Kristine Anderson
Graduate: Rachel Dortin and Ella Tucan

The Professor Arnold Goldsmith Annual Scholarship
Undergraduate: Negwa Nagi
Graduate: Molli Spalter

The Daniel Keyes Family Endowed Scholarship
Lynette Lenk

The Dennis Turner Memorial Scholarship in Film Studies
Kevin Ball, Shelby Caldwell

The Doretta Burke Sheill Endowed Memorial Scholarship
Sallwa Assarawie, Julia Hill, Connor Newton, David Nowak, Tristan Shaw, Hillary Weiss

The Pearl A. Warn Endowed Scholarship in English
Undergraduate: Rochelle Stevenson
Graduate: Sean Renkert

Department of English Excellence in Teaching Writing Awards
Shelby Cadwell, Ph.D. Candidate, Graduate Teaching Assistant
Ilinca Diaconu-Stillo, Part-time Faculty
Jule Thomas, Full-time Lecturer

Students Amber Marie Taylor, Ki Lee Shannon O’Brien, and Nushrat Rahman were invited to join the Phi Beta Kappa honor society. (Not pictured: Delani Anne DeGrosky)

Recipients of the 2018 Joseph & Mary E. Yelda Scholarship include (from left to right) Avery Zimmerman, Amal Shukr, Nicole Saez, Elsa Nilaj, Jacob Haffrey, Steven Proudfoot, Rachel Hackett, Amal Rass. 

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