Heartiest congratulations to the English Department Prize winners for 2025-2026!
Undergraduate Prizes
May 18, 2026
Heartiest congratulations to the English Prize winners for 2025-2026!
Drama Prize
Aanika Eragam ‘26 – The Marina Keegan Award for Excellence in Playwriting for “BACK TO BANGALORE” and “SANIYA’S SALON”
Edie Wolfe Lipsey ’26 - The Marina Keegan Award for Excellence in Playwriting for “A PANEL OF EXPERTS”
Fiction Prizes
Mia Cortés Castro ‘26 – Elmore A. Willets Prize for Fiction for “Book Club for Grieving Mothers”
Eli Osei ‘26 – Elmore A. Willets Prize for Fiction for “Nightwalk”
Emily Pedroza ’29 - J. Edward Meeker for First-Year Fiction for “Sesame oil chicken soup (máyóu jītāng 麻油鸡汤)”
Matias Guevara Ruales ’26 – Elmore A. Willets Prize for Fiction for “The Mysteries of Light”
Hrishita Shah ‘26– Elmore A. Willets Prize for Fiction for “Seven Circles”
Grace Xu ’29 – J. Edward Meeker for First-Year Fiction for “Ballad to St. Augustine”
Nonfiction Prizes
Yuen Ning Chang ‘26 – John Hersey Prize for a longer work of nonfiction for “Vidērī Quam Esse”
Brennan Columbia-Walsh ‘26 – Henry P. Wright Prize for “Scrupulosity”
Maggie Grether ’26 – John Hersey Prize in Journalism for “A Body of Journalistic Work”
Tristan Hernandez ’26 – John Hersey Prize in Journalism for “A Body of Journalistic Work”
Macie Liepe ‘28 – John Hubbard Curtis Prize for Sophomore and Junior Essays for “Momhood”
Yegor Rubanov ‘27 – John Hersey Prize in Journalism for “A Body of Journalistic Work”
Sam Tucker-Smith ‘27 – John Hubbard Curtis Prize for Sophomore and Junior Essays for “Talking to Each Other”
Megan Wright ‘27 – Henry P. Wright Prize for “Bullet Season”
Poetry Prizes
Maisie Bilston ’26 – Academy of American Poets and Gordon Barber Memorial Prize for “Collected Poems”
Jerry Carino ’28 – Albert Stanburrough Cook Prize for “He’ll Never be a Fireman!” and other poems
Emily Pedroza ’29 – J. Edward Meeker First-Year Poetry Prize for “In Desert Valley Hospital waiting room, I play Death” and other poems
Lucy Ton That ‘26 – Albert Stanburrough Cook Prize for “Frida’s Poem” and other poems
First-Year Essay Prizes
Leonardo Chung ‘29 – Bloch Prize “for the best essay in English” for ” Rereading the Wound in Louise Gluck’s Ararat “
Aparna Dhulipala ‘29 – J. Edward Meeker First-Year English Prize for “Monterey”
Jeremy Estep ‘29 – Bloch Prize “for the best essay in English” for “Reincarnation in Moby Dick” and McLaughlin Memorial Prize for excellence in English composition for “Fragments of Stephen Dedalus: Oscillation, Identity, and Becoming in Joyce”
Zach Granne ‘29 – J. Edward Meeker First-Year English Prize for “Let Us Now Praise Imperfect Men”
Johnny Honnold ’29 – J. Edward Meeker First-Year English Prize for ” The Camera that Broke Congress “
William Kessler ‘29 – McLaughlin Memorial Prize for excellence in English composition for “The Fictional Nietzsche and His Audience: On Section 1.14 of On the Genealogy of Morals”
Amelia LeBlanc ‘29 – McLaughlin Memorial Prize for excellence in English composition for “A Wild Invocation”
Eduardo Rodriguez ‘29 – Winston T. Townsend Prize “for excellence in English composition” for “Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Love, Loss, and Grief”
Winslow Solomon ‘29 – McLaughlin Memorial Prize for excellence in English composition for “The Blind Man of Madame Bovary”
Rachel Yoon ’29 - Winston T. Townsend Prize “for excellence in English composition” for “The Slim-Thick Era: Thinning the Line Between the “Real” and the “Ideal” Self”
Maile Zeng ’29 - Winston T. Townsend Prize “for excellence in English composition” for “Preserving the Pause: The Ethical Implications of Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems”
Sophomore Prizes
Saron Ghaim ‘28 – John Hubbard Curtis Prize for “love of the English language and facility in writing” for “The Expanded Kitchenette”
Smile Jiang ‘28 - C. Wyllis Betts Prize for “”Heaving Circles, Winding Arcs”: The Lexicon of the Divided Self in W. B. Yeats’s ‘A Dialogue of Self and Soul’ ”
Yitzhak Tucker ‘28 - John Hubbard Curtis Prize “love of the English language and facility in writing” for “Moses, Miriam, and Aaron: The Prophetic Hierarchy in Numbers 12”
Junior Prizes
Zoe Frost ‘27 – Henry H. Strong Prize in American Literature for “The Trouble with Motherhood: Parenting, Independence, and Indigeneity in two Native American Novels”
Claire Newman ‘27 – John Hubbard Curtis Prize for “love of the English language and facility in writing” for ““[W]hat can disturb our tranquility?”: Irrational Forces in Frankenstein”
Ashley Wang ’27 - John Hubbard Curtis Prize for “love of the English language and facility in writing” for “Queering Reconciliation in Achmat Dangor’s Bitter Fruit”
American Literature Prizes for Juniors and Seniors
Allie Gruber ‘26 - Henry H. Strong Prize in American Literature for “‘Only see see that I see’: Modes of Seeing in The Golden Bowl”
Senior Prizes
Keya Bajaj ‘26 - John Hubbard Curtis Prize for Excellence in English Courses and in a Senior Essay for “On “Knowing” Friends: Female Friendship & Epistemology in Le Fanu’s Carmilla and Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend”
Maisie Bilston ‘26 – John Hubbard Curtis Prize for the best Creative Writing Concentration Project for “London, Going: or Poems on the Underground”
Brennan Columbia-Walsh ’26 - John Hubbard Curtis Prize for Excellence in English Courses and in a Senior Essay for “Robert Bresson’s Artistic Education: Notes on a Minimalist Cinematography”
Julia Furneaux ’26 - Chauncey Brewster Tinker Prize for the Outstanding Senior in English
Allie Gruber ‘26 – Edward Tompkins McLaughlin Prize to a senior for Outstanding Work in the Major
Graham Litz ‘26 - John Hubbard Curtis Prize for Excellence in English Courses and in a Senior Essay for “‘Mid heora unnyttum wordum’: Textual Proliferation and Its Implications for Pedagogy in the Old English Boethius” and the Sholom & Marcia Herson Scholarship Prize “for students in the Senior Class … who shall have done outstanding work in English Language and Literature and who intend to do graduate work in English literature”
Samantha Liu ’26 - John Hubbard Curtis Prize for excellence in English Courses and in a Senior Essay for “Fever and its Metaphors: Race, Contagion, and Biopolitical Fantasies in William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!”
Michael Paz ’26 - John Hubbard Curtis Prize for excellence in English Courses and in a Senior Essay for “LO QUE LE PASÓ A MANUELA1: Scale and Disappearance in Valeria Luiselli’s Tell Me How It Ends and Lost Children Archive”
James Prud’homme ‘26 - John Hubbard Curtis Prize for excellence in English Courses and in a Senior Essay for “Hegel, Wordsworth, and the Sources of British Anti-Romantic Romanticism” and the Ralph Paine Memorial Prize for the best senior essay in English for “Fortune’s Brag: the Tragedy of the Ordinary in Uncle Vanya”
Lucy Ton That ’26 - Lloyd Mifflin Prize for an outstanding senior essay in English for “You Can’t Destroy My True Red Heart”: A Reading of the 2008 Translations of Hồ Xuân Hương”