2018 English Scholarship and Writing Awards

On Friday, Apr. 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 and 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 and 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