Chen Ya and Siuha Anita Liu Award for Professional Writing

Emi Chongsiriwatana, Arianna DiMenna

Kitty O. Locker Research Grant

Kestrel Anderson
Disabled Perspectives on Writing with Sources
Advisor: Christa Teston

Eduardo Mabilog
This project seeks to better understand the labor and experiences of writing center directors of color. 
Advisor: Beverly Moss

Kitty O. Locker Travel Awards

Hannah Locher, Olivia Rowland

Kitty O. Locker Undergraduate Professional Writing Contest

1st Place: Skylar Joslyn, Charlie Latkovic , Rachel Morgan, Grace Mullett
Ohio Sea Grant and Stone Lab: Plastic-Free Great Lakes Campaign Proposal
Instructor: Guy Spriggs, English 3304 (Spring 2023)

2nd Place: Paige Galperin, Bella Karagheuzoff, Ava Staudt, Cole Vonnahme
Ohio Sea Grant and Stone Lab: Plastic-Free Great Lakes Proposal
Instructor: Julianna Crame, English 3304 (Spring 2024)

Academy of American Poets Award/Arthur Rense Prize

Connor Beeman
gorge song, cicada elegy, fawn bodies
Judge's comments: The poet uses form to shift meaning drawing lines across supposedly natural boundaries and cascading a poem across the page like a deer moving through a field. The poems show the possibility of transformation and the opportunity for growth through connection to the very things the speaker was taught to kill in childhood. We need poems like this now, hopeful through grief, illustrative of growth.

Judge: Jessica Suzanne Stokes (they/she) is a disabled poet/performer/educator/doctor of literature. They analyze contemporary ecopoetics’ crip methods for climate survival and read into the experimental poetics of those who have historically been experimented upon. They are co-founder of the HIVES Research Workshop and Speaker Series. Their work has been published in Amodern, feminist review, and The Ending Hasn’t Happened Yet.

Citino Poetry Award

1st Place Undergraduate: Mayson Mullins
“America Says,” “Under the bridge,” “Winter Wine”
Judge's comments: The triptych of poems in this manuscript critique place and America via spare observations. 

2nd Place Undergraduate: Fé Beatty
Waterbody
Judge's comments: In “Waterbody,” the poet chronicles a body’s transformation across space and time, building tension via engaging uses of lineation.

1st Place Graduate: Claudia Owusu
Girlchild
Judge's comments: The poems in this winning manuscript I admire for their formal dexterity and introspective reveries on place, belonging, and family. This body of work also juggles self-reliance beside a reverence for intergenerational knowledge passed down between women.

2nd Place Graduate: Aidan Aragon
"Peacock," "Sublimation," "Now that I know faggot is a gender--" "Hope is a Species of Evil," "Upon Viewing Koloman Moser's 'Clash of the Titans,' Everyone Knows I'm Miserable," and "Villainy"
Judge's comments: The poems in this manuscript feather and flash with impassioned explorations of self. I am also struck by this poet’s fresh descriptions of embodiment.

Judge: Jenny Johnson is the author of In Full Velvet (Sarabande Books, 2017). Her honors include a Whiting Award, a Hodder Fellowship, and a NEA Fellowship. Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, The New York Times, Sinister Wisdom, and elsewhere. She is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at West Virginia University, and she is on the faculty of the Rainier Writing Workshop. She lives in Pittsburgh. 

Gertrude Lucille Robinson Award

1st Place: Sarah Jenkins
The Aphantic and Her Labyrinth
Judge's comments: This essay is a fascinating and skillful blend of the writer’s personal history with aphantasia, or the inability to visualize, and research about the condition. Equal parts engaging and informative, it offers a pleasurable education in what it means to experience the world in this way.

2nd Place: Zoe Velez
Monster Theory: The Overlap of Hispanic Culture and Fear
Judge's comments: This ambitious, wide-ranging essay about the figure of the monster, Puerto Rico, Hispanic culture, and fear effortlessly weaves together the narrator’s personal history with a compelling intellectual examination of a variety of texts involving vampires, monsters, and the like. The writer moves between family stories, political theory, and cultural objects with ease, using each to illuminate the others. 

3rd Place: Asmaa Yousif
Roots in Distant Sands
Judge's comments: An evocative story of the narrator’s trip to Cairo to visit relatives that brings the place and characters to life in vivid detail. It is a pleasure to spend time in the world the writer creates on the page, and ultimately, the piece offers an affecting exploration of the narrator’s Egyptian American identity.

Judge: Cara Blue Adams is the author of the interlinked story collection You Never Get It Back, a New York Times Editors’ Choice. Her work appears in the New Yorker, Granta, and elsewhere. She is an associate professor at Temple University, where she teaches in the MFA program.

Helen Earnhart Harley Creative Writing Fellowship Award in Fiction

Gabriella Navas
Judge's comments: In subtle, understated prose, the author introduces us to a worldly cast of female characters who long for confidence and love, meaningful relationships and self-fulfillment. These expertly crafted fictions of quiet elegance shine a light on the modern spectacles—in our relationships, in our cultures--in which all too many of us find ourselves.

Judge: Emily Greenberg is the author of Alternative Facts (Kallisto Gaia Press, 2025), a runner-up for the Acacia Fiction Prize and BOA Editions Short Fiction Prize. An editor at Split/Lip Press, her writing has appeared in the Iowa Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Santa Monica Review, Big Fiction, Witness, Chicago Quarterly Review, and the New Stories from the Midwest anthology, and her honors include the Witness Literary Award in Fiction and two Pushcart Prize Special Mentions. 

Helen Earnhart Harley Creative Writing Fellowship Award in Non-Fiction

Connor Beeman
to touch the water (or return)
Judge's comments: Each sentence unfurls remarkably toward Ohio’s stunning and mysterious hills and hollers, gorges and rivers. This magnificently written essay, like the tributaries it documents, awakens us to the beauty and humanity of knowing and not knowing, belonging and searching.

Judge: Judged by Mia Leonin

Helen Earnhart Harley Creative Writing Fellowship Award in Poetry

Misha Ponnuraju
Judge's comments: These poems employ a language and a form that feels voracious, consumable, and consuming. They possess a core of memory and personal history that vividly and deftly anchors the language.

Judge: Joshua Butts is the author of New to the Lost Coast (Gold Wake Press, 2015). His poems have appeared recently in Pleiades, The Account, Fugue, and Southern Humanities Review. He teaches at the Columbus College of Art & Design in Columbus, OH.

Jacobson Short Story Award

1st Place: Ethan Hazen
Make Me Pretty
Judge's comments: Darkly comic and jarringly absurd, “Make Me Pretty” is a story about the pressures of patriarchy and the limits of love. A cautionary tale, perhaps, about adult complicity and the dangers of permissive parenting, “Make Me Pretty” escalates heinously even as the mother's avowed love for her daughter remains constant.

2nd Place: Lily Tatara
An Outline For a Story I’ll Never Write, About My Thoughts Concerning the Death of Grandma's Last Horse, Who I Never Really Liked Anyhow, and my Complicated, Semi- Related Feelings About the Imminent Death of my Brother. Or, Alternatively, "Timberland"
3rd Place: Tessa Bouton
Mother
Judge's comments: After encountering a man in the grocery store and finding herself followed by him, our protagonist walks past her own house, enduring the condensation of the milk carton on her jeans and bemoaning the state of things. A story about fear, “Mother” tells the story of a woman whose trajectory in the world is shaped irrevocably by her understandable yet imperfect perception of it.

Judge's comments: Although its title suggests that the story will never be written, “An Outline” tells the story of the dying days of the Timberland ranch and the uneasy relationship between the narrator and her grandmother, a woman who love horses, men, and her ideas of a hardscrabble life more than her grandchild. Told in sparse, lyrical prose, “Outline” asks important questions about grief and jealousy and the stickiness of inheriting Woe as a companion. 

Judge: Tim Conrad is the author of the short story collection The Machine We Trust. His writing has appeared in journals such as Story, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and Quarterly West and has received awards from Beloit Fiction Journal and the Emrys Foundation. A native of Ohio, he currently teaches creative writing at Michigan State University. 

R.L. Stine Scholarship

Maximilian Tucker

Tara M Kroger Award

Awardee: Divya Alamuri
Jasmines in the Dark
Judge's comments: I could hear the particular ways in which these characters speak, with even the deceptively banal exchanges conveying a complex social hierarchy. I could experience, sensorially, the domestic spaces they move through and sense the ways in which these spaces are sites of memory, history, and anecdote that make and unmake its inhabitants. The writing revealed the hand of an assured storyteller I want to read more of.

Honorable Mention: Porter Leland Huang
Band of Totality
Judge's comments: What happens in this story evoked a shocking thrill in me, and who it happens to—the narrator—and his response to it evoked a mixture of empathy and queer joy, an ecosystem where longing, desire, and pleasure remain irreconcilably interconnected. Compelling and tremendously readable, it is a work of writer who is both a skilled storyteller and a stylist. 

Judge: Shastri Akella's debut novel, The Sea Elephants (Macmillan USA, Penguin India) was named a most anticipated debut by Good Morning America, LGBTQ Reads, Electric Lit, and others. Their writing may be found on Best American Short Fiction, Guernica, Massachusetts Review, Masters Review, and elsewhere. Recently, their fiction won awards from Galley Beggar Press UK, Black Warrior Review, Bellevue Literary Review, and elsewhere. They were a fiction fellow at the Fine Arts Works Center. 

Vandewater Poetry Award

1st Place: Alexandra Smereka
Detroit Industry & Other Poems
Judge's comments: I loved the three-pronged emphasis on history, ecology, and work in this group of poems. These poems also have a sophisticated sense of narrative and excellent pacing. The line breaks were sharp as knives!

2nd Place: Skyler Barnes
"Schwa," "When Ruben Studdard Won American Idol," "Recompense"
Judge's comments: I especially enjoyed the abecedarian, which moves from the conceptual to the historical to the personal without a hitch. 

Honorable Mention: Schyler Butler
Girl Meets the Yeller
Judge's comments: I especially loved how the poet braided the historical and the personal so beautifully together. The chess poem was a standout! 

Judge: Melissa Range is the author of Scriptorium, a winner of the 2015 National Poetry Series (Beacon Press, 2016), and Horse and Rider (Texas Tech University Press, 2010). Recent poems have appeared in Ecotone, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Nation, and Ploughshares. Range is the recipient of awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Antiquarian Society, and MacDowell. Originally from East Tennessee, she teaches creative writing and American literature at Lawrence University in Wisconsin.

Digital Media Prize for Outstanding Undergraduate Work

Ianni Acapulco
Who Are We?
Instructor: Scott DeWitt, English 4569 (Autumn 2024)
Judges’ comments: Who Are We stands out not only for its strong aesthetic presence but, more significantly, its emotional and intellectual depth. Our judges were particularly impressed by how you grapple with the complexities of body, place, identity, and power. We believe this project an exemplary piece of Compositional scholarship. Bravo!

Hailey Roose
Where is Home?
Instructor: Scott DeWitt, English 4569 (Autumn 2024)
Judges’ comments: We are recognizing Where is Home? for your thoughtful and moving exploration of time, place, and personal experience. Our judges were greatly impressed by how you effectively took advantage of digital media in the creation of this engaging, interactive project. Further, we note how the themes of "searching, guidance, and destination" referenced in your reflection are so clearly realized through your combination of visual and textual storytelling elements. We believe this project outstanding, and worthy of recognition as an exemplary piece of Compositional scholarship. Excellent job!

Award for Excellence in Teaching by a First-Year Graduate Teaching Assistant

Maya Kompella

WIL-E Prize for Outstanding English 1110 Project 

Elizabeth Komara
OB/GYN Research Deserves Funding
Instructor: Michelle Gabay, English 1110.01 (Spring 2024)

David Young Liu
The Phoenix and The Eagle
Instructor: Lauren Cook, English 1110.02 (Autumn 2024)

Advanced Writing/Writing in the Themes Outstanding Student Composition Award

Elizabeth Freytag
Survivor as a 'Produser' Community:  How Fans Advocate for Racial Diversity in Reality TV
Instructor: Rachel Jurasevich, English 2367.01 (Autumn 2024)
Judges’ comments: One judge noted: "This piece most impressed me with its direct analysis of primary source materials which were pulled from both media (Survivor) and online communities. The writing was also strong and attuned to the essay’s audience, balancing and creating an accessible argument." Another judge praised Freytag's essay as "excellent research of both primary and secondary sources, clear exigence, very solid relation between media and larger social implications contextualized in both time and space.

Outstanding Graduate Teaching Associate in Second-Year Writing

Erin Temple
English 2367.08: The U.S. Experience: Writing about Video Games and Virtual Worlds
Judge's comments: The committee was impressed with how strongly Erin outlines her teaching philosophy and how it shapes the course, as well as how innovative she is in her approach to teaching writing about video games. The excitement and dedication to student outcomes is evident in her materials. The judges expressed that hers is a course they would like to take.

Arnold and Frances Shapiro International Scholarship

Nicole Pohlman

David O. Frantz Thesis Award

Awardee: Sofia Racevskis
"To seem and not to be": Reputation and Identity in Mary Robinson's Memoirs and The Natural Daughter
Advisor: E. Leigh Bonds and Jacob Risinger

Honorable Mention: Elizabeth Blackshire
Parts of a Whole: Tutor Perceptions of Online Writing Tutoring Platforms
Advisor: Allison Kranek and Susan Lang

Honorable Mention: Theo Jasper
Genesis
Advisor: Marcus Jackson

David O. Frantz Travel Award

Caroline Davis, Paris Prichard, Erica Romine, Emma Schobeloch, Riley Thomas, Lexi Vaughn

Elaine H. and George W. Hairston Scholarship

Lindsey Hall

English Prize for Best Scholarship on Social Justice

Ky Verona
in the dark // in rainbows: A Queering Knowledge Production
Instructor: Peyton Del Toro, English 2282 (Spring 2024)

Genevieve M. Critel Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Composition

Awardee: Emma Kuisick
Gender in the Writing Center: Attendance, Representation, and Approachability
Instructor: Allison Kranek, English 3467S (Spring 2024)
Judges’ comments: We felt "Gender in the Writing Center" was especially persuasive, engaging with a pressing social issue through skillful study design and data collection. We were particularly impressed with the range and breadth of research and scholarship featured in the literature review. We enthusiastically recommend the writer submit the piece to an undergraduate writing studies journal.

Honorable Mention: Kaylen Niese
Teaching Political Rhetoric to Young Voters in The Digital Age
Instructor: Jonathan Buehl, English 3379 (Autumn 2024)
Judges’ comments: We found the argument in “Teaching Political Rhetoric to Young Voters in The Digital Age” especially clear. We appreciated the careful attention to a past study that built off prior research to improve information literacy in the author’s curriculum design and felt that the curriculum could be employed in an actual classroom.

Lord Denney's Players Introductory Shakespeare Prize

Honorable Mention: Ryan LaCrosse
Keep Your Friends Close and Your Frenemies Closer: A Tale of Friendships and Fallacies in Shakespeare’s Othello
Instructor: Alan B. Farmer, English 2220H (Spring 2024)

Awardee: Julian McLaughlin
O Tempora, O Mores: The Facets of Mark Antony in Julius Caesar
Instructor: Alan B. Farmer, English 2220 (Autumn 2024)

Lord Denney's Players Advanced Shakespeare Prize

Honorable Mention: Analese Mitson
Negotiating Relationships in Shakespeare's As You Like It
Instructor: Sarah Neville, English 4523 (Autumn 2024)

Awardee: Audrey Williams
Trapped by Tradition: The Tragic Nature of Romantic Ideals and Female Identity in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night's Dream and Othello 
Instructor: Jennifer Higginbotham, English 4520.01 (Autumn 2024)

Minor in Professional Writing Unpaid Internship Grant

Madina Davlatboyeva, Paige Hollowell, Tony Imbroscio, Kelly McGraw, Alexis O'Dell, Madison Perline, Darien Smaltz

Robert E. Reiter Prize for Critical Analysis

Honorable Mention: Ianni Acapulco
The Unvanishing Act: Understanding There There’s Ending
Instructor: Joe Ponce, English 4581 (Autumn 2024)

Awardee: Keira Millerchip
The Woman in White: A Critique of Victorian Psychological Practices
Instructor: Clare Simmons, English 4590.05H (Autumn 2024)

Robert N. and Sharon S. Gandee Scholarship

Gabrielle Hornung

Rosemarie Sena Scholarship for Excellence in English Studies

Nicole Pohlman
Judges’ comments: The judges were impressed by how Pohlman has been active on the Lima campus and in the community of Lima as an English major, and also noted her particular excellence across the number of English courses she has taken. The fact that she will be delivering a talk at the Lima public library about her experience in an upcoming English class also spoke to the strength of her application. Ultimately, the judges felt that Pohlman has demonstrated excellence in an impressive number of English courses throughout her undergraduate career, in addition to all the other ways in which she has been active as an ambassador for the major.

Virginia Hull Diversity and Inclusion Award

Taylor Woosley

Brian McHale Award for the Best Graduate Paper in Narrative Studies

Awardee: Domenic Cregan
Coetzee's Symphonic Truth: Character Narrators and The Narratee in "Summertime"
Instructor: Robyn Warhol, English 6761 (Autumn 2024)

Honorable Mention: Caleb Hays
Reading The Multiverse: Everything Everywhere All at Once as Narrative Gymnasium
Instructor: Jim Phelan, English 6998 (Autumn 2024)

Honorable Mention: Akash Shetye
Layered Time: Revisiting David Herman's Polychrony Through Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer
Instructor: Robyn Warhol, English 6761 (Autumn 2024)

English Graduate Human Rights Award

Hannah Locher
Liquid Liminality: New Materialist Feminisms, Decolonialism, and the Opportunities of World/Water Traveling
Instructor: Christa Teston, English 6998 (Autumn 2024)

Estrich Paper Prize

Awardee: Hannah Locher
Liquid Liminality: New Materialist Feminisms, Decolonialism, and the Opportunities of World/Water Traveling
Instructor: Christa Teston, English 6998 (Autumn 2024)

Honorable Mention: Akash Shetye
What Does a Postcritical Reading Look Like?
Instructor: Jake Risinger, English 6700 (Autumn 2024)

Honorable Mention: Lila Wright
"Soule-Curer and Body-Curer": Parsons, Doctors, and Community in The Merry Wives of Windsor
Instructor: Alan Farmer, English 5720 (Autumn 2024)

Muste Dissertation Prize 

Melissa Guadrón
Simulation Rhetorics: A Case Study of Interprofessional Healthcare Training
Advisor: Christa Teston

These awards are granted by the College of Arts and Sciences.

Arts and Humanities Course Release Grants

David Brewer, Alan Farmer, and Galey Modan

Arts and Sciences Career Success Grant

Elizabeth Falter

Graduate Graduate Student Award for Teaching Excellence

Kayla Probeyahn

Mid-Career Faculty Excellence Award

Margaret Price

Paul W. Brown Excellence in Teaching Award

Drew Jones

Susan M. Hartman Mentoring and Leadership Award

Christa Teston

These awards are granted by various university-level offices and organizations.

Center for Ethics and Human Values Award

Elyse Reed

Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme Society of Fellows, 2025–26 

Jamison Kantor, Merrill Kaplan

Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme Faculty Fellow for Imagined Futures, 2025–26

Jake Risinger

Hayes Advanced Research Forum, Humanities (Oral/Talk division)

3rd Place: Sabrina Durso

Presidential Fellowship

Andrew Romriell (2024-2025)

Department of English Staff Member of the Year

Elizabeth Falter

English Undergraduate Organization Associated Faculty of the Year

Zoë Brigley

English Undergraduate Organization Professor of the Year

Joe Ponce

English Graduate Organization Professor of the Year

Pranav Jani

Joseph V. Denney Award for an Outstanding Senior English Major

Awardee: Elaine Koons

Nominees: Jay Anderson, Madelyn Campbell, Sydney Moore, Neil Ramdeen, Daisy Roberts, Elisha Stauffer, Richa Thakar, Libby Wallace

Marlene Longenecker Award for Teaching and Leadership

Christa Teston

Farewells

Jenny Patton, Nick White

Graduating Student Employees

Renn Bowen, Madina Davlatboyeva, Blaise Reader, Libby Wallace

Retirements

Kathy Fagan Grandinetti, Jessica Prinz, Robyn Warhol

Summer 2024

Han Chen, David Foley, Swea Kumlien, Meghan Rieser, Susan Sharp Hurst, Sahra Shirdon, Grace Singleton, Taya Woerner

Autumn 2024

Evelyn Albert, Kathleen Boggus, Angela Borghese, Cailyn Burr, Michelle Coleman, Dylan Dobbs-Euans, Ethan Dunlap, Johnathan Elke, Shawn Gardner, Nicholas Gazvoda, James Harper, Leigh Hillegass, Kira Kadar, John Kompier, Elaine Koons, Natalie Kosky, Sydney Koth, Margaret Lardie, Ainsley Lawler, Meghan Lee, Jasmine Lewis, Angela Lika, Hope Logan, Reece Ludwig, Reece Marcelain, Rachel Miracle, Jessica Proch, Clara Robinson, Rain Ruffin, Casey Schetter, Emily Sculli, Collin Thacker, Kirstyn Ulmer

Spring 2025

Michael Adusei, Sumaya Ali, Cameron Allen, Jay Anderson, Adriana Antuono, Avery Bartholow, Eddie Bautista Garcia, Julia Begley, Frank Bell, Aidan Berry, Aaliyah Binford, Christopher Blauman, Aurora Boothby, Renn Bowen, Jacob Braun, Meagan Brosneck, Emily Burnheimer, Madelyn Campbell, Mira Cassell, Emma Cliff, Emma Conkle, Leah Cook, Kathryn Cronin, Madina Davlatboyeva, Olivia Dearth, Brandon DePerro, Arrieonna Derricoatte, Amanda Diaz Guevara, Ellie Erich, Khreah Everett, Sara Franquesa-Guivernau, Sara Gallagher, Shelby Gambill, Dawson Gamble, Sarah Garfinkel, Seth George, Hailey Gilchrist, Olivia Greer, Faith Harris, Dane Harter, Nicholas Haydock, Riley Hernandez, Kayleigh Hopper, Gabrielle Hornung, Stephanie Houser, Iman Hussein, Bridget Ilg, Emmett Kahnert, Natalie Klenzman, Holden Klym, Emily Kompier, Isabella Korzenok, Emma Lambert, Katherine Larimer, Grace Lawson, Madeline Leichtenberg, John Lewis, Owen Lewis, Breanna Little, Josie Lloyd, Margaret Lobley, Jenna Maher, Julian McLaughlin, Lily McMahon, Maya Mercer, Evelyn Meyer, Hannah Miller, Tahlil Mitchell, Analese Mitson, Sydney Moore, Mayson Mullins, Micah Nielsen, Tara Pamulapati, Luke Peart, Madison Perline, Alyssa Piatak, Kennedee Plank, Tanushri Rao Ponneri Anand, Neil Ramdeen, Blaise Reader, Elyse Reed, Daisy Roberts, Kelsey Rogers, Grey Romohr, Kelly Russell, Jenna Schraffenberger, Alison Sebenoler, Nathan Sedlmeier, Benjamin Sidorenko, Darien Smaltz, Elisha Stauffer, Gabriella Stolly, Brandon Swabby, Richa Thakar, Taylor Thompson, Alexandra Tighe, Maci Tinkel, Addison Vaughn, Cheri Vazquez, Libby Wallace, Benjamin Wood, Daphne Wood, Sophia Wood, Kathryne Woollard, Olivia Young, Ethan Zeiser

Spring 2025

Joshua Cornelius, Jessica Crabtree, Luis Moreno, Jack Van Dine, Lila Wright

Spring 2025

Kelli Trinoskey

Summer 2024

Isaiah Back-Gall

Spring 2025

Skyler Barnes, Gianna Gaetano, Megan Jones, Julie Kim, Trista Koehler, Kathryn LeMon, Heather McCabe, Cat McMahan, Danielle Ola, Claudia Owusu, Andrew Romriell, Katelyn Roth, Alexandra Smereka, Sappho Stanley

Summer 2024

Evan DeCarlo, Caleb Gonzalez, Paige Mason, Kayode Odumboni, Jordan Woodward

Autumn 2024

Natalia Colón Alvarez, Peyton Del Toro, Tamara Mahadin, Morgan Podraza, Alex Thompson

Spring 2025

Mary Gibaldi, Samantha Trzinski, Irma Zamora