Creative Writing Prizes

Barnard College English Department
Prizes Requiring Submissions

The Barnard Department of English is happy to announce the winners of the 2009 departmental awards. For a list of the recipients, click here.

Congratulations to you all!

2009 Prize descriptions below.
Burns Essays
Creative writing

Information on the 2009 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.

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.

2009 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 outside 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 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 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 2009 Prizes:

	POETRY JUDGES
	Frank Bidart published several volumes of poetry (Golden State, The Sacrifice, In the Western Night: Collected Poems 1965-90, and more recently Star Dust, Music Like Dirt, and Desire.) He is co-editor of his former teacher and friend, Robert Lowell,s Collected Poems. Frank Bidart received many honors including among several others the Wallace Stevens Award, the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award, The Paris Review's first Bernard F. Conners Prize abd, most recently in 2007, the Bollingen Prize in American Poetry. He has taught at Wellesley College since 1972.
	Matthea Harvey is the author of three books of poetry: Modern Life, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and a New York Times Notable Book of 2008, Sad Little Breathing Machine and Pity the Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of the Human Form. Her first children's book, The Little General and the Giant Snowflake is forthcoming from Tin House Books.
	Victoria Redel is the author of two books of poetry and three books of fiction. her most recent collection of poems is SWOON. She teaches at Sarah Lawrence College.
	PROSE JUDGES
	Galaxy Craze received a BA from Barnard College and attended the NYU creative writing program on a full scholarship from The New York Times. Born in London, she currently resides in New York City and Northampton, Massachusetts. She is the author of Tiger, Tiger and By The Shore, which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award for best debut.
	Nellie Hermann is a graduate of Brown University and the M.F.A. program at Columbia. Her first novel, The Cure for Grief, has received national acclaim in such publications as Time, Elle, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and others. She works as a writing teacher in the Program in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University Medical School.
	Sam Lipsyte is the Director of Undergraduate Creative Writing at Columbia University's School of the Arts. His novel, Home Land, was a New York Times Notable Book for 2005 and winner of the Believer Book Award. He is also the author of The Subject Steve and Venus Drive, named one of the 25 Best Books of 2000 by The Village Voice Literary Supplement . His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The Quarterly, Noon, Tin House, Open City, N+1, Slate, McSweeney's, Esquire, GQ, Bookforum, The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, La Nouvelle Revue Francaise and Playboy, among other places. He was a 2008 Guggenheim Fellow.

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