Creative Writing Prizes

Barnard College English Department
Prizes Requiring Submissions

2009 Prize descriptions below.

2008 Winners of the Burns Society Prize

Megan Messinger and Christina Black

2008 Winners of the Peter S. Prescott Prize

First: Emily Kramer
Second: Anuva Kalawar, Marguerite Scheffer
Third: Hallie Wells, Julia Phillips
Honorable Mention: Clare Needham, Rachel Waldholz

2008 Winners of the The Lenore Marshall Prizes

POETRY -
First: Hallie Wells
Second: Mabel Lee, Elise Castillo
Third: Megan Messinger
Honorable Mention: Joyce Ng, Xiomara Maldonado

PROSE - Rachel Waldholz

2008 Winner of The Amy Loveman Prize

Helen Skiba

2008 Winners of the Helen Searcy Puls Prize

Elise Castillo, Mabel Lee, Megan Messinger

Click for : Information on the 2008 judges.

2009 Burns Society Prize

The Burns Society of the City of New York is pleased to announce the first annual Burns Society Prize. The Barnard English Department will award $1000 to the student who writes the best paper on a topic related to the poetry of Robert Burns, the 18^th-Century Scottish poet. Competition is open to all Barnard undergraduates of any department or major.

At the discretion of the English Department, if there is more than one winner in any given year, the prize may be divided. If no submissions qualify, the prize may be deferred until the following year.

Rules:

1. Students are required to label each entry with her name, phone number, expected year of graduation, and a list of the contents (if more than one essay is included). Each submission must be securely enclosed in a manila folder or envelope. Every envelope or folder should also be labeled on the outside as well with the student's name and a list of contents.

2. All submissions should be double-spaced and on one side of standard 8-1/2" by 11" sheets.

3. Each separate essay or story must have the student's name, and the pages of each must be numbered.

The Burns Society of the City of New York is pleased to announce the first annual Burns Society Prize. The Barnard English Department will award $1000 to the student who writes the best paper on a topic related to the poetry of Robert Burns, the 18^th-Century Scottish poet. Competition is open to all Barnard undergraduates of any department or major.

Deadline: Entries for the contest must be turned in by 4:00 p.m., Monday, February 16th, at the English Department office, 417 Barnard Hall. As this deadline is final, students would be well advised to set a somewhat earlier deadline in order to forestall emergencies.

posted 6/27/08

Creative Writing Prizes

The submission DEADLINE for 2009 Creative Writing Prizes is Monday, Feb. 16, 2009 at 4 p.m.

Any questions should be addressed to 
Dr. Timea Szell, Director of Creative Writing, at tszell(at)barnard(dot)edu.

2008 Peter S. Prescott Prize for Prose Writing

This prize is offered annually by the family of the distinguished writer and critic Peter S. Prescott, author of Child Savers and former book critic of Newsweek. Competition is open to all Barnard undergraduates of whatever department or major. This year's prize is $300. The prize will be awarded at the discretion of a board of three judges for a work in prose, fiction or creative non-fiction, which gives the greatest evidence of creative imagination and sustained ability. Each of the three judges, acting independently, is asked to designate his or her first, second, and third choice among the contestants. In the final reckoning, each first choice will count as three points, second choice as two points, and third as one point. The contestant with the highest number of points will be the winner. In any year, however, the judges may decline to designate the choices if none of the work submitted seems to them good enough to deserve the prize. In that event, Mr. Prescott's family and the English Department will determine how the prize money may be spent to encourage creative talent among undergraduate writers at Barnard.

Deadline: Entries in the contest must be turned in by 4:00 p.m., Monday, February 16th, at the English Department office, 417 Barnard Hall. As this deadline is final, students would be well advised to set a somewhat earlier deadline in order to forestall emergencies.

Rules:

1. Students are required to submit four copies of each entry, each set labeled with the author's name, email address, expected year of graduation, a list of the contents, and each securely enclosed in a manila folder or envelope. Every envelope or folder should be labeled on the outside as well with the student's name and a list of contents. Do not use heavy binders.

2. Typescripts should be double-spaced, on one side only of standard 8-1/2" by 11" sheets.

3. Each separate essay or story must carry the student's name, and the pages of each must be numbered.

4. You may submit one short story or piece of creative non-fiction, or several shorter such pieces, totaling 10-15 pages, and no more than 20.

5. Please retain your copies of your work as these entries will not be returned.

Important notes: Past winners of cash awards in the writing competition may enter again; their entries, however, should be composed of new material. All entries must be proofread and corrected; corrections may be made neatly in pen or pencil. If you submit material previously submitted as work for a course, you must retype at least those pages containing instructors' comments, grades, etc.

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2009 Poetry Prizes at Barnard College

The Leonore Marshall Poetry Prize

This prize was established on a permanent basis by the New Hope Foundation in memory of Leonore Marshall, the writer and peace activist who had given the prize annually for many years before her death. Besides the prize money, the winner receives Latest Will, Leonore Marshall's collected poems. Each of three judges, acting independently, is asked to designate a first, second, and third choice among the contestants. In the final reckoning, each first choice will count as three points, second choice as two points, and third as one point. The contestant with the highest number of points will be the winner.

The Amy Loveman Prize

This prize was established by friends and Barnard classmates of the late Amy Loveman, long-time editor of the Saturday Review and a key figure for many years in the Book-of-the-Month Club. The award is for "the best original poem by a Barnard undergraduate." The Barnard English Department judges this contest.

Helen Searcy Puls Prize

For the best poem in any of the above competitions.

Instructions for poetry prizes:

All three competitions are open to Barnard undergraduates of whatever department or major. It is suggested that each competitor submit more than one poem, but no more than five. There can be no fixed statement about the number of lines required; contestants may find it helpful to think of approximately 100 lines, but they should not hesitate to submit fewer or more. The student should provide four separate and complete sets of manuscripts, each set labeled with her name, expected year of graduation, and a list of the contents, and each securely enclosed in a manila folder or envelope. Each separate poem within the set must also carry the writer's name. Pages must be numbered. Typescripts should be on one side only of standard 8-1/2" x 11" pages. Clear photocopies are acceptable. Every envelope or folder should be labeled with the student's name and a list of contents. Do not use heavy binders.

A single entry of four sets of manuscripts will be considered for all four prizes. Entries in the contest must be submitted before 4 p.m., Monday, February 16th, at the English office, Room 417, Barnard Hall. Please retain your copies of your work as these entries will not be returned. Copies of this notice may be obtained in 417 Barnard Hall. Past winners of cash awards in the poetry competitions may enter again; their entries, however, should be composed of new material.

Judges for the 2008 Prizes:

	POETRY JUDGES
	Timothy Donnelly -- Timothy Donnelly has been poetry editor of Boston Review since 1995. His first book of poems, Twenty-seven Props for a Production of Eine Lebenszeit, was published by Grove Press in 2003. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous magazines and journals, including American Letters & Commentary, American Poet, The Canary, Conduit, Crowd, The Denver Quarterly, Fence, jubilat, The Literary Review, The Modern Review, The Paris Review, PEN America, Ploughshares, A Public Space, TriQuartely, Verse, Volt, and many others, and they have also appeared in such anthologies as Isn't It Romantic: 100 Love Poems by Younger American Poets, Joyful Noise: An Anthology of American Spiritual Poetry, Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century, Poetry Daily: Poems from the World's Most Popular Website and in German translation in Schwerkraft: Junge amerikanische Lyrik. He is an Assistant Professor of Poetry in the Writing Division of Columbia University's School of the Arts and lives in Brooklyn, New York.
	Joanna Klink -- Joanna Klink is the author of two books of poems, They Are Sleeping (University of Georgia Press, 2000) and Circadian (Penguin, 2007). She is completing a lyric meditation on Paul Celan titled You. A recipient of a Rona Jaffe Writer's Award, she teaches in the M.F.A. Program at the University of Montana.
	Lisa Williams -- Lisa Williams is associate professor of English at Centre College. Her second collection of poems, Woman Reading to the Sea, won the 2007 Barnard Women Poets Prize and is forthcoming in April by W.W. Norton. Her first book is The Hammered Dulcimer (Utah State University Press, 1998). She has poems recently published or forthcoming in Poetry, Southwest Review, Raritan, Salmagundi and Best American Erotic Poetry: 1800 to Present (Scribner's 2008). In 2004 she was awarded the Rome Prize in literature by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
	PROSE JUDGES
	Stacey D'Erasmo -- Stacey D'Erasmo is the author of the novels Tea, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; and A Seahorse Year, which was named a Best Book of the Year by the San Francisco Chronicle and Newsday, and won both a Lambda Literary Award and a Ferro-Grumley Award. She was a Stegner Fellow in Fiction from 1995-1997. Her essays, features, and reviews have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the New York Times Book Review, and Ploughshares. She is currently an assistant professor of writing at Columbia University.
	John Hough, Jr. -- John Hough, Jr. is the author of five novels, including Carry Me Home, a novel of the Civil War, which will be published by Simon & Schuster in 2009. His most recent novel is The Last Summer. A longtime resident of Martha's Vineyard, he is an editorial writer and book reviewer for his family's newspaper on Cape Cod, The Falmouth Enterprise, and an occasional contributor to the esteemed Vineyard Gazette, which his great uncle, Henry Beetle Hough, published from 1922 to 1967.
	Honor Moore -- Honor Moore is the author of The Bishop's Daughter, a memoir, to be published in May and of The White Blackbird, A Life of the Painter Margarett Sargent by her Granddaughter. Her three poetry collections are Red Shoes, Darling and Memoir. She teaches in the graduate writing programs at The New School and Columbia.

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