The recipients of this year’s Grady Awards for Creative Writing will read from their winning manuscripts in a special New Writing Series event on Thursday, April 19, 2018 at 4:30pm in the Hill Auditorium (Barrows Hall). The event will be hosted by members of the Creative Writing faculty and is free and open to the public.
The external judge for this year’s fiction prizes was Idra Novey (NWS F17). The poetry judge was Claire Donato (NWS F17). Brief biographies of the winners appear below:
Undergraduate Runner-Up, Fiction: Catherine Gottwalt
Catherine Gottwalt is a third year English and Journalism student at the University of Maine. Born and raised in Minnesota, she travels often back and forth from the plains to the coast and back again, which is good for young Catherine because she’s most inclined to soak up simple stillness and nap too much, if left alone. Her faith is her life’s most prominent anchor, and she participates as an active leader with Cru, an internationally known Christian ministry group. Catherine was awarded second place for fiction at the BA level.
Undergraduate First Prize, Fiction: Micah Valliere
Micah Valliere is an English major with a concentration in Creative Writing and with double minor in Classical studies and Medieval and Renaissance studies. He has presented his translations from the Latin and washed dishes at the Happenings Series. The Open Field published his magic realist vignette Concepción in 2017. He has a particular interest in Early Modern English drama, having studied at the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford upon Avon and he appeared as Theseus in the University of Maine’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He got into writing fiction because he was tired of writing about himself.
Undergraduate Runner-Up, Poetry: Colleen Lucy
Colleen Lucy is a fourth year undergraduate studying English and Kinesiology. Some people know her by Cami, but no, she does not know how her parents came up with the nickname. Next year she will attend Boston College as a first year M.A. student. Thanks to her adolescent obsession with Marie Antoinette, and Professor Rogers, her research interests lean towards the eighteenth century and its understanding of physiology.
Undergraduate First Prize, Poetry: Cara Morgan
Cara Morgan is a third year undergraduate in the English department and works as the Tutor Assistant Director in the Writing Center. She studies critical and analytical writing, but her recent struggles with a chronic pain disease turned her to creative writing. She operates mostly within the world of slam poetry and has participated in two UMaine poetry slams, taking first place this semester. You can usually find her in the Writing Center amidst chaos or at home with her cat. She believes that the best kinds of art come from turning something shitty into something you’d be willing to share with a room full of people. She’s had a lot of shitty and she’s ready to share.
Graduate Runner-Up, Poetry: Kat Dubois
Kat Dubois is a first year MA candidate studying poetry & poetics. She is the editorial assistant to the scholarly journal Paideuma: A Journal of Modern and Contemporary Poetry and Poetics.
Graduate First Prize, Poetry: Kristyn Gerow
Kristyn Gerow is a second year MA Candidate in English, concentrating in creative writing and Fiction at the University of Maine, Orono. In her Master’s thesis, and in other fiction as well, she focuses on the body as foreign and distinct, chronically ill bodies, and how illness and other outside factors interact with the body. Until the Grady awards were announced, she did not consider herself a poet, but no one has been able to explain the difference between poetry and fiction to her, so maybe she’s just a writer.
Graduate Runner-Up, Fiction: Morghen Tidd
Morghen Tidd is a first-year graduate student studying creative writing with an interest in auto-fiction. When she’s not haunting the halls of Neville, she can be found wandering aimlessly through Hannaford’s aisles, talking about her parrot Renly, or thinking about aliens. On a productive day, she can be found doing all three.
Graduate First Prize, Fiction: Paul Eaton
Paul Eaton is a second-year MA candidate and a Wicks Fellow for the upcoming year. His career as an English student has included stops at Oberlin, Naropa, the University of San Francisco, and San Francisco State University. He lives in Orono with his two cats, Creeley and Duncan, where he listens to a lot of Brian Eno as he looks out the window.
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The UMaine New Writing Series was founded in 1999 and is sponsored by the English Department and the National Poetry Foundation with support from the Office of the Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost, The Fiddlehead Fund, the New Writing Series Fund, the Lloyd H. Elliott Fund, the Milton Ellis Memorial Fund, the Honors College, the Clement & Linda McGillicuddy Humanities Center, and the Cultural Affairs/Distinguished Lecture Series Committee. Grateful acknowledgment is made to the IMRC, and to donors Allen and Sally Fernald, for use of the Fernald APPE space.
If you have a disability that requires accommodation for a NWS event, please contact the office of Student Accessibility Services, 121 East Annex, 581-2319 (Voice) or 581-2311 (TDD).
The authors who appear in the NWS write for adult audiences and make use of a wide spectrum of language and subject matter. We are happy to advise parents and secondary school teachers about the suitability of specific events for their children or students. Just contact Series coordinator Steve Evans at steven dot evans at maine dot edu or at 207-581-3822 a few days in advance.
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UMaine New Writing Series 