Undergraduate Prize Winners 2023-2024

HEARTIEST CONGRATULATIONS to the English Department Prize winners for 2023-2024!

Drama Prize

Hank Graham ‘24 - The Marina Keegan Award for Excellence in Playwriting for “The Mourning Show” and “The Final Flight of the Passenger Pigeon”

Mikayla Johnson ‘24 - The Marina Keegan Award for Excellence in Playwriting for “SAPPHIRE,” “after jezebel,” and “East of Mercy”

Fiction Prizes

Cal Barton ‘25 - Elmore A. Willetts Prize for Fiction for “The Skin Shed”

Charlotte Hughes ‘25 - Elmore A. Willetts Prize for Fiction for “Winter Mazurka” 

Eli Osei ‘26 - Elmore A. Willetts Prize for Fiction for “The Earl of Grey”

Eason Rytter ‘27 - J. Edward Meeker Prize for Freshman Fiction for “Exit Pursued by Bear”

Netanel Schwartz ‘25 - Elmore A. Willetts Prize for Fiction for ”The Rabbi Abuhatzera” 

Nonfiction Prizes

Mary Ben Apatoff ‘24 - Henry P. Wright Prize for “Alchemy and Illusions” 

Zachary Groz ‘24 - John Hersey Prize in Journalism for a “body of work” for “A Body of Journalistic Work”

Annaelise Kennedy ‘24 - Henry P. Wright Prize for “Roadkill”
 
Zoe Larkin ‘24 - Henry P. Wright Prize for “Chicken Person”
 

Sophia Li ‘24 - John Hersey Prize for a Longer Work of Nonfiction for “The Body’s Place”

Keenan Miller ‘24 - John Hubbard Curtis Prize for a longer work of nonfiction for “Commute”

Evita Thadhani ‘24 - Henry P. Wright Prize for “Bathrooms”

Poetry Prizes

Maisie Bilston ‘26 - Gordon Barber Memorial Prize for “Hurricane” and other poems

Ana Paula Padilla Castellanos ‘25 - Albert Stanburrough Cook Prize for “Eros” and other poems

Alistair Lam ‘27 - J. Edward Meeker Prize for Freshman Poetry for “In Flight” and other poems

Jean Wang ‘24 - Academy of American Poets for “6 Poems”

First Year Prizes

Maria Andreu Bird ‘27- Bloch Prize “for the best essay in English” for ”The Wife’s Tale: Weaving, Control, and the Perfect Ending” 

Nancy Chen ‘27 - J. Edward Meeker Freshman English Prize for “Whispers from a Restaurant” 

David Cho ‘27 - Winston T. Townsend Prize “for excellence in English composition” for “Music, The Soundtrack of our Lives”

Niva Cohen ‘27 - J. Edward Meeker Freshman English Prize for “The Wand and Dust of Liz Fredette”

Aurelia Cors ‘27 - Winston T. Townsend Prize “for excellence in English composition” for “Enforcing Equality: An Exploration of the Growth of Women’s Rowing Under Title IX” 

Sophia Eno ‘27 - McLaughlin Memorial Prize for Excellence in English composition for “Beauty and Connection: What Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein Tells Us about Hierarchy in Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things” 

Alison Lee ‘27 - Winston T. Townsend Prize “for excellence in English composition” for “OCD Vulnerability within the Model Minority: Analyzing Confucian Philosophy and the Model Minority Myth” 

Claire Newman ‘27 - McLaughlin Memorial Prize for Excellence in English composition for “‘Perplexing Thoughts,’ ‘Grateful Digressions’: Joy and Questioning in Milton’s Paradise Lost

Calista Oetama ‘27 - J. Edward Meeker Freshman English Prize for “Making Space with Phil Acimovic” 

Hailey Talbert ‘27 - Bloch Prize “for the best essay in English” for ”Depictions of the Slave Trade in Narrative and Mezotint” 

Ashley Wang ‘27 - McLaughlin Memorial Prize for Excellence in English composition for “‘Waste, Shit, and Excess’: Nail Salons as Unexpected Sites of Queer Intimacies” 

Sophomore Prizes

Allie Gruber ‘26 - C. Wyllis Betts Prize  for “My long two-pointed ladder”: Tension and Confusion in Robert Frost and John Hubbard Curtis Prize for “love of the English language and facility in writing” for “What Can One Know?”: Conscious and Unconscious Mental Imagery in Middlemarch

Caroline Utermann ‘26 - John Hubbard Curtis Prize for “love of the English language and facility in writing” for “Why am I so changed?”; A Study of Hysteria in Wuthering Heights and Dracula 

American Literature Prizes for Juniors and Seniors

Anne Gross ‘25 - Richard Schoenberg Prize for “the best critical essay upon an American poet” for “The Case of the Missing Epigraph”

Catherine Papanasam Setlur Kausikan ‘25 - Henry H. Strong Prize in American Literature for ‘Borne back ceaselessly into the past’: Destructive Nostalgia in The Great Gatsby and The Last 

Junior Prizes

Croix Black 25- John Hubbard Curtis Prize for “love of the English language and facility in writing” for  “Sentences on the Sea: Realism, Romanticism, and the Tides of Emotion in Yeats and Synge” 

Anne Gross ‘25 - John Hubbard Curtis Prize for Junior Essays for  ”The Lagartija and Me.” 

Oliver Guinan ‘25 - John Hubbard Curtis Prize for Junior Essays for “Home Means Nevada” 

Senior Prizes

William An ‘24 - John Hubbard Curtis Prize for Excellence in English Courses and in a Senior Essay for “The Pruning of a Peril / Readership and the Sensibilities of Feeling in Victorian and Contemporary Poetry” 

Chidima Anekwe ’24 - Edward Thompkins McLaughlin Scholarship for Outstanding Work in the Major 

Ashley Duraiswamy ’24- Chauncey Brewster Tinker Prize for the Outstanding Senior in English and 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”

Adriana Golden ’24- Chauncey Brewster Tinker Prize for the Outstanding Senior in English 

Jacob Kaufman-Shalett ’24- Lloyd Mifflin Prize for an Outstanding Senior Essay in English for “Shadow-Facts & Snow-Fairies: The Dual Sonnet & Queer Double Consciousness of McKay’s Harlem Shadows” 

Rose Kohler ’24- John Hubbard Curtis Prize for Excellence in English Courses and in a Senior Essay for “And The War Went On: Soldiers, Memory, and Literature of the Great War and Vietnam”

Raja Moreno ’24- John Hubbard Curtis Prize for Excellence in English Courses and in a Senior Essay for  “Tellson’s Bank, Time, and Historical Narrative in A Tale of Two Cities” 

John Nguyen ’24 - Chauncey Brewster Tinker Prize for the Outstanding Senior in English and Edward Thompkins McLaughlin Scholarship for Outstanding Work in the Major 

Olivia O’Connor ’24- John Hubbard Curtis Prize for Excellence in English Courses and in a Senior Essay for “Filling in Murakami’s ‘Empty Narrative’: The Living Legacy of Russian Theater in Drive My 

Katia Vanlandingham ’24 - Ralph Paine Memorial Prize for the Best Senior Essay in English for “A Portrait is a Portrait is a Portrait: Woolf, Stein, and the ‘Painterly’ Writer” 

Hillary Warolin ’24- John Hubbard Curtis Prize for Excellence in English Courses and in a Senior Essay for “Layers of Meaning: Moby-Dick and Immersive Storyworlds” 

Wren Wolterbeek ’24- John Hubbard Curtis Prize for Excellence in English Courses and in a Senior Essay for “Linguistic Acquisition and Exclusion in Frankenstein”

Hanwen Zhang ’24- John Hubbard Curtis Prize for Excellence in English Courses and in a Senior Essay for “Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears”: Dickens’s Sentimental Dilemma