Winners of the 2014 Steve Grady Awards for Creative Writing read their manuscripts at the Black Box Theater in the Innovative Media Research and Commercialization Center Thursday night for a crowd of students, faculty and community members as part of the inaugural event for this year’s New Writing Series.
The New Writing Series began in 1999 as part of the English department, providing weekly readings from poets, fiction writers, translators and more. This week the NWS readers were UMaine’s own. Four undergraduate students and four graduate students read. Winners and runner-ups in both degree levels presented in the categories of poetry and fiction.
“The Grady Awards draw a connection between undergrads and graduate students. It creates a conversation I wasn’t lucky enough to have in my undergraduate career,” said Greg Howard, a UMaine English professor, who emceed the awards alongside English professor David Kress.
Seth Dorman, first-prize winner of undergraduate fiction and second-prize winner of undergraduate poetry began the event reading his winning poem “O New Jerusalem!” as well as others.
Dorman, a fourth-year English student, is an opinion columnist for The Maine Campus, poetry editor of The Open Field — an undergraduate literary journal, and editor in chief of the student publication Doulos, a journal of Christian thought. Dorman won the fiction first prize for his pieces “The Creation of Adam” and “Lauds.”
English and history student Reuben Dendinger kicked off the fiction portion of the night with his piece “The Fresco at Diatomacea,” a dystopian story about a man living in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. After the main character, Frank, roams around trying to find paint in the dystopian world, the Count of Diatomacea, who says he must complete a fresco for him because he is the “saddest painter in the world,” approaches him, demanding that Frank come with him.
“Faculty like to see at the Grady Awards how much the writer’s work has progressed in four years,” Kress said between performances.
The same applied for graduate work. Rose Wednesday, a graduate student of fiction, won first prize in graduate fiction for “The Artists, from an Unnatural History of Humans in Love.” The judge, Peter Markus, said that Wednesday’s work was “equally grounded in the world of fiction and the sentence.” Instead of reading her winning work, Wednesday read her piece “Fight! Fight! Fight!”
Wednesday is the current fiction editor of Stolen Island. Her work is published in Armchair Aesthete and Stolen Island and an upcoming story will be published in Timber Magazine Online.
Fiction judge Peter Markus read in the NWS in spring 2013 along with poetry judge Anna Moschovakis.
Moschovakis said graduate first prize poetry winner Sarah Cook’s “Poem in response to snow and other things” is both self-aware and funny. The poem concerns a snowy day and graduate school but also delves deeper into the greater implications of the two.
“In order to,” a piece by undergraduate first prize winner Sean Miller,“electrifies the page,” according to Moschovakis, who said she is “eager to see what the poet will do next.”
Maurice Burford won second prize in graduate poetry for his pieces “Frostbite” and “The Optimist.” Burford, who is poetry editor of HOUSEFIRE Publishing and is co-editor of Mammoth Editions, both based in Portland, Ore., read from his poem “The Optimist.”
“All good weather is happening to friends in lower altitude,” he read. Burford then read from his poem “How to Turn Into a Tree After You Die,” which brought chatter among the crowd.
Second-prize winner in graduate fiction Alexander Champoux read his award winning piece “Imperfect Tense,” a coming of age story about a teenage girl who volunteers at a nursing home to get over her fear of the elderly. The teen’s plan to leave the home backfires when her teenage writing career, solidified in a piece she wrote about the nursing home, wins an award.
Champoux is the Coordinator of the Writing Program and Farnham Writers’ Center at Colby College.
The next NWS event is on Feb. 25 at 4:30 p.m. in room 104 of the Innovation Media Research and Communication Center. Polish playwright, translator and theater director Philip Boehm will read.