The ceremony takes place Thursday at 4 p.m. in the Wren Room in Sanborn Library and is a fitting end to the Poetry and Prose series that featured readings from professional writers throughout the year.
The awards include such prestigious honors as the Academy of American Poets Prize for the best poem, the Erskine Caldwell Prize for outstanding short story, the Grogan-Hardy Prize in Literature for "extraordinary promise," the Jacobson-Laing Award in Poetry, the Lockwood Prize for juniors, the Grimes Prize for seniors, the Sidney Cox Memorial Prize and the William C. Spengemann Award in Writing.
The ceremony will kick off with a reading by this year's prize judge; poet Peter Cooley.
Cooley's major works of poetry include "The Company of Strangers," "The Room Where Summer Ends," "Nightseasons," "The Van Gogh Notebook," "The Astonished Hours" and "Sacred Conversations." The poet has been honored with many awards in both teaching and writing. In 2001, he won the Inspirational Professor Award and in 2003 he was named the Newcomb College Professor the Year. He was the Robert Frost Fellow at the Breadloaf Writers' Conference in 1981 and the poetry editor of the North American Review from 1970 to 2000.
Like all prize judges before him, Cooley chose the winners independently from the faculty's input.
"We stay completely out of it," said professor of creative writing Ernest Hebert, "He makes all of the decisions." This system ensures that the writing is judged purely on its own merit and not on the reputation of the student.
Because the prize judge is solely responsible for the distribution of the awards, he or she is carefully chosen at the beginning of the year.
"We always look for someone with a lot of experience with undergraduate writers," Cleopatra Mathis, professor of English and creative writing, said. "Peter Cooley, a poet with eight books, directs the creative writing program at Tulane University, and since Louisiana is in such bad shape right now, we thought it would be nice to have a New Orleans writer and professor."
Cooley knows the importance of a college writing program as he himself attended from Shimer College, the University of Chicago and the University of Iowa, where he was a student in the Writers Workshop and received his Ph. D.
One thing especially exciting about this year's award ceremony for the student winners is the fact that the financial budget is greater than ever.
"Dartmouth is blessed. We have a really good budget for awards this year," Hebert said, "For example, what used to be a $50 prize years ago is now a $500 prize."
Endowments provide the main source of funding for the various awards. "Many are endowed awards, and others are given by alumni who want to support writing at Dartmouth," said Mathis, "We are lucky to have so much support."
Ultimately it is this theme of supporting student writers that makes the Creative Writing Awards such a special and unique event.
This year's prizewinners are Stevie Belchak '08, Ryan Berger '04, Frances Cha '07, Nicole Conroy '03, Reiko Harigaya '06, Sydney S. Kim '06, Brittany R. Lewis '06, Katelyn M. Martin '06, Ivy M. Pruss '07, Jessica R. Spradling '06, Justine K. Sterling '07, Shannon J. Prince '09, Emily C. Serrell '07. The winner of each award will give a reading of his or her piece during the ceremony.
Belchak, Cha, Serrell and Sterling are also members of The Dartmouth staff.
