University of Connecticut |
Writers awarded literary prizes
Sean Forbes, a PhD candidate in English, drew inspiration from his family’s history on the Colombian island of Providencia to win first place this year in the 46th Annual Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize competition. “Many of my poems pay homage to the stories that my grandparents and parents told me as a child,” says Forbes, who was raised in the St. Albans community in Queens, NY. “The cadence of the words, the images evoked, and my grandparents’ soft Creole twang were all poetry to my ears, and I try my best to replicate the same nuances in my poetry.” The $1,000 Wallace Stevens prize, awarded by the Creative Writing Program in the English Department, is sponsored by The Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc., and The Hartford Friends and Enemies of Wallace Stevens. The prize honors Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Wallace Stevens, who was a resident of Hartford from 1916 until his death in 1955. Stevens was an executive at Hartford Accident and Indemnity Co. This year’s second place winner in the Wallace competition is Lori Carriere, a master’s degree student of England literature from Long Island who received the Lillian E. Kahn award for her writing as an undergraduate at Stony Brook University. Third place went to freshman Nicole Rubin of Norwich, who has a double major in biology and human rights with a concentration in creative writing. Rubin plans to be a pediatrician, and she also hopes to earn her MFA in creative writing. The Collins Literary Prize winners for 2009 are Jennifer Orlando, a senior from Southbury, Ct., the poetry winner, and Emily Lyon, who won the prize for fiction. Orlando is a senior English major who is poetry editor of UConn’s literary magazine, Long River Review. She is also a trained singer and has been a violinist since childhood. She is a deejay on the WHUS radio show, “Strawberry Cheesecake.” Lyon graduated from CLAS in 2002 with majors in philosophy and linguistics. She is now pursuing a bachelor’s degree in printmaking. The Collins Literary Prizes are awarded annually by the Creative Writing Program. For more information, go to http://www.creativewriting.uconn.edu |
