While some writers go through great lengths to find inspiration, author Meg Kearney says that she believes people should have an open mind because inspiration can be found anywhere. As the prize judge for the English department’s annual Creative Writing Awards, Kearney opened the ceremony last Thursday in Sanborn Library by reading nine of her poems, including “Creed” (2001), “Home By Now” (2009) and “A Grasshopper Walks Into A Bar” (2009).
During her reading, Kearney said it was difficult to choose this year’s winners because of the high quality of all of the submissions. She said she judged the entries based on four criteria — the author’s sense of urgency, the piece’s originality, whether the piece conveyed a sense of controlled structure and the degree of musicality when hearing the piece read aloud. English professor Ernest Hebert, who will be retiring after this year, helped Kearney announce the winners.
Sarah Khatry ’17 received the Sidney Cox Memorial Prize, an award given for the piece that best represents the high standards Cox, a former professor at the College, set for himself and his students when he began teaching at Dartmouth in 1926. After accepting the award for her novella “Ritual,” Khatry shared an excerpt with the audience and said she wrote it in the fall for English professor William Craig’s class “Writing and Reading Fiction.”
Khatry said that she was nervous to read her piece because the setting was different from reading for a workshop session.
“It wasn’t until afterwards that someone told me, ‘When you’re up there, you’re not reading to be critiqued,’” Khatry said. “You’re there because you’ve won and you’re celebrating your work as it is and what others saw in it.”
Lacey Jones ’16 won the Academy of American Poets Prize for her poem sequence “Internal Combustion.” Jones read the first two stanzas from one of her poems “The Itch.”
Jones said she wrote the sequence after realizing many of the ideas she keeps in a list on her phone fit together. She said that winning the award helped her realize that she could, in fact, succeed at writing.
“Writing is something that really matters to me,” Jones said.
Jones said she spoke with Kearney after the ceremony about how to make time for writing while balancing a busy work schedule.
Tailour Garbutt ’16 won the Lockwood Prize, an award for a member of the junior class, for her piece “Individual Invisible,” which she said she wrote as her final piece for English professor Jeff Sharlet’s winter class “Raising the Dead.” “Individual Invisible” tells the story of Edward Mitchell, the first black man to attend the College in 1824, Garbutt said. Through her research, she discovered that the Board of Trustees originally denied Mitchell admission but decided to overturn its decision after the student body petitioned for Mitchell to attend.
Garbutt said the win was incredible not only for her, but for Mitchell and all those who helped her research Mitchell’s story, including Woody Lee ’68, who provided resources about the early history of African Americans at the College.
“I wrote this story because I felt that it needed to be shared,” Garbutt said. “It became more than an assignment. It became personal.”
Kelsey Stimson ’15 won the Mecklin Prize for best writing in creative nonfiction or journalism for “You Need to Keep Your Things Secure,” a chapter from her thesis “Unduly Familiar.” Stimson said her thesis is about the lives of the correctional officers at the New Hampshire State Prison for Women in Goffstown, Hillsborough County. Rather than focusing on the views of the inmates as recent shows, such as “Orange is the New Black” (2013) have done, Stimson said she wanted to find the voice of the officers and flesh out their stories in a realistic way instead of the stereotypical media portrayals.
She said that she discovered the officers are not allowed to be familiar with the inmates, share personal information or develop bonds with them.
“These officers are living in this kind of prison within a prison,” Stimson said. “There’s this conflict between professional apathy and personal empathy towards the women. It’s very intense.”
As the first two-time winner of the Mecklin Prize, Stimson said winning again feels a bit ironic since becoming an English major after making an agreement with Sharlet, who taught her first-year seminar “Investigative Memoir.”
“I wanted to be an economics major, but Professor Sharlet told me if you win this contest, you have to be an English major,” Stimson said. “It’s kind of ironic winning freshman and senior year.”
Andrew Lohse ’12 was awarded the Alexander Laing Memorial Writing Award in Poetry for his manuscript “After the Object is Smashed.”
Kevin Patterson ’17 won the Thomas Henry Ralston VI English 80 Prize for his short story “10 Top Albums.”
Jenna van de Ruit ’15 won the Grimes Prize, an award given exclusively to a member of the graduating class, for her piece “Making Space.”
Josh Koenig ’16 received the William C. Spengemann Award in Writing, which is chosen for the piece’s innovative and iconoclastic qualities, for the fictional prose “Having Once Been King” he wrote for professor Catherine Tudish’s class “Intermediate Workshop in Fiction.”
Robert Herbst ’16 won the Erskine Caldwell Prize for his short story “Dusk.”
Koenig is a member of the Dartmouth senior staff.
