The English Department sponsors annual writing contests that are open to all Clark undergraduate students, including those enrolled in the School of Professional Studies. All work must be completely original.
Writing Contests
Annual Contests
Loring Holmes and Ruth Dodd Drama Contest
One entry per student. Entries can be a one-act play or a section of a longer play; minimum of 10 pages, not to exceed 25 pages. Playwriting format required. Please contact Professor Gino DiIorio for questions about standard playwriting format.
Prizes $425/$200/$100
Prentiss Cheney Hoyt Poetry Contest
The number of submissions per student is limited to five (5) poems.
Prizes: $125/$75/$50
Betty ’79 and Stanley Sultan Short Story Contest
The number of submissions per student is limited to one story, not to exceed 5,000 words.
Prizes: $300/$175/$125
Leroy Allston Ames Essay Contest
For the best essay on any aspect of 19th-century England — literature, history, philosophy, art, or science.
Students may submit an essay written for a course.
The number of submissions per student is limited to one essay.
Prizes: $500/$300/$200
Current Winners
1st Place – Silas Schwartz ’26 for “Transmission:”
2nd Place – Sabine Gordon ’26 for “Ceramic Mother”
3rd Place – Ian Cruz ’25 for “The Birds Shall Return”
Honorable Mention -Ursula Zia ’24 for “Bird Braid”
Honorable Mention -Ian Cruz ’25 for “tomatoes“
Honorable Mention -Isabella Simoes ’27 for “touch tank“
1st Place – Silas Schwartz ’26 for “The Deer in the Lake”
2nd Place –Cassie Mayer ’24 for “This Could be Us”
3rd Place – Sophia Friedmann ‘24 for “Takeoff”
1st Place – Gwenne Catherine Balcius ’26 for The Final Day of Doug Stevens
2nd Place – Nat Solomon ’24 for RevelARTsionary
3rd Place – Joseph Andaloro ’25 for Closing Time
1st Place – Cassie Mayer ’24 for “Utopia as Consecrated on Supposition and Sustained through Obsession”
2nd Place -Abigail Phillips ’26 for “King Leopold’s Ghost: Diplomacy, Utility, and Beneficence in 19th Century Governance”
3rd Place – Annemaire Walsh ’25 for “The Weaponization of Physical Beauty in Victorian Storytelling”
Previous Winners
2023
1st Place – Kelsey Heyel ’23 for “She”
2nd Place – Jesse Lowe ’24 for “I Hope I Last”
3rd Place – Kaleigh Gibbons ’24 for “Shelves”
Honorable Mention – Annelisse Lynch ’23 for “Just Hair”
Honorable Mention – Neomi Efrat ’26 for “Seated“
1st Place – Kate Roller ’25 for “Family Dinner”
2nd Place – Liam Wang ’25 for “Night Walking”
3rd Place – Katherine Noroian ‘26 for “Awakening”
1st Place – Aanandita Bali ’23 for It’s Mars Time Baby
2nd Place – Gwenne Balcius ’26 for Shake On It
3rd Place – Honey Snyder ’24 for Dreamballs
1st Place – Christina Rose Walcott ’23 for “Whiteness is Actually the Evil in Mizora”
2nd Place – Jordan Holley ’23 for “A Eugenicist’s Utopia: Selective Reproduction and Intolerance of the “Other” in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland”
3rd Place – Robin Bozik ’24 for “Bleak Midwinter – The Gothic in Armadale”
Honorable Mention – Leilani Brown ’25 for “Lord Alfred Douglas’ ‘Two Loves’: Love, Shame, & Names”
2022
1st Place Mallory Trainor ’22 for “I Dream in Time Lapse”
2nd Place Jesse Lowe’24 for “( )”(Parentheses)
3rd Place Ursula Zia’24 for “Becoming an Air Plant“
1st Place Juliana Hall 24 for “The Disappearance of Persephone Reid”
2nd Place Olivia Wilde 23 for “Backyard Eulogy”
3rd Place Jesse Lowe 24 for “I Have Not Drowned“
1st Place Dylan Parra 22 for The Trees Don’t Talk Anymore
2nd Place Kelsey Heyel 23 for Funeralia
3rd Place Luke Pound 22 for Flying Through Windows
1st Place Christina Rose Walcott 23 for Subverting the Sexual and Romantic Perceptions: Black Female Identity in Iola Leroy
2nd Place Kylee Rutkiewicz 21 for The Use of the Doppelganger in Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
3rd Place Kelsey Heyel 23 for On Victorian Dress and Gender Nonconformity
2021
1st Place: Kylee Rutkiewicz ’21 for “Brother”
2nd Place: Jacob Lonon ’22 for “The thought of you intrudes upon my sphere”
3rd Place: Mahi Taban ’21 for “phantom pains”
1st Place: Robin Bozik ’24 for “Me, Myself, and The Body”
2nd Place: Tyler Hempel ’22 for “A Way Home”
3rd Place: Kira Houston’23 for “The Face Painter”
1st Place: Brett Iarrobino ’21 for New, New Normal
2nd Place: Jeremy Francoeur ’22 for Absolute Zero
3rd Place Tie: Dylan Parra ’22 for Giving up the Dream
3rd Place Tie: Tim Lucey ’22 for Ouroboros
1st Place: Ann Kathryn Hodges ’23 for “Women’s Hidden Freedom in ‘Goblin Market’”
2nd Place: Mahi Taban ’21 for “The Victorian Gothic and the Sanctity of White Woman: As Seen Through ‘Carmilla’ and ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’”
3rd Place: Manal Ahmed ’21 for “Gender, Insurgency, and Benevolence: An Exploration of Power in Maria Edgeworth’s ‘The Grateful Negro’”
2020
1st Place: Hannah Ortiz ’23 for “Ode to Moses”
2nd Place: Ruth Fuller ’20 for “Panic”
3rd Place: Danielle Black ’21 for “Truths Split”
1st Place: Alexis Dinkins ’20 for “It Will Grow Here”
2nd Place: Jerinna Solages ’22 for “And Free They Shall Be”
3rd Place: Rachel Lloyd ’20 for “Wordlessly”
1st Place: Maria Connors ’20 for Nothing Out of the Extra-Ordinary
2nd Place: Emily Buza ’20 for excerpts from Kitten
3rd Place: Riley Kay Starnhagen ’20 for She Was the Sun
Honorable Mention: Luke Pound ’22 for excerpts from Elements
1st Place : Mahi Taban ’21 for “Sexual Identity, Foreignness, and the Gothic Vampire: The Racialization of Homosexuality in ‘Carmilla’”
2nd Place: Davina Tomlin ’20 for “Men and Tools in ‘Ode to a Nightingale’”
2019
1st: Alyssa Pelletier ’19 – “Thursday Night Dinner”
2nd: Taylor Murphy ’22 – “After the Summer of Dusk”
3rd: Caitlin Leggett ’22 – “Today’s Special”
1st: Manal Ahmed ’21 – “Untitled”
2nd: Mahi taban ’21 – “Like Unto the Wind”
3rd: Carolyn Strauss ’19 – “The Old Apartment”
1st: Brett Iarrobino ’21 – Aw, Nuts!
2nd: Toni Armstrong ’19 – Life Cycles
3rd: Zoe DiPinto ’20 – “The Revolting Crotch” & Riley Kay Sternhagen ’20 – The List
1st: Maria Connors ’20 – “The Immoral Imagination in Kets’s to ’To Autumn’ and ‘Ode to Nightingale’”
2nd: Azariah Kurlantzick ’20 – “Lost Spirits: Feat or Unstable Identifies in Richard Marsh’s ‘The Beetle’“
2018
1st: Naomi Shmueli ’18 — “Mountain Mama”
2nd: Jennifer Vernick ’18 — “After the Fourth Hospital Stay”
3rd: Mahi Taban ’21 — “Letter to Khyber”
3rd: Jane Thomas ’21 — “Most Likely to Succeed”
1st: Samuel Marlinga ’18 — “I”
2nd: Henry Lynch ’18 — “Everyone Came But No One Was There”
3rd: Jonathan Krauss ’20 — “Tiny Fish”
Honorable Mention: Mal Sklar ’18 — “Do Roombas Dream of Electric Sheep?”
1st: Toni Armstrong ’19 — When
2nd: Shawn McGarry ’19 — Act 1, Scene 2 (Dan and Beatrice… )
3rd: Lukas Pomerville ’21 — Bastille Café
1st: Emily Hawkins ’21 — “Romanticizing Middle-Class Ideals in Victorian Novels”
2nd: Mahi Taban ’21 — “Issues of Ethnicity, Nationality, and Foreignness in 19th-Century British Literature: How the Gothic Was Used as a Disguise for Racial Commentary”
2017
1st: Cassidy To ’17 — “I AM”
2nd: Maria Connors ’20 — “Tidal Eyes”
3rd: Jessica Hoops ’18 — “Revelation”
3rd: Genevieve Mahoney ’17 — “The Cat Called Kitty”
1st: Laura Barker ’17 — 2016
2nd: Toni Armstrong ’19 — Forgetting Lee Grant
3rd: Chloe Anderson ’17 — Hangover
3rd: Emily Denny ’17 — The Filthy People
1st: Nadia Friedler ’17 — “Sympathy, Imagination, Sight: Trauma and Othering within Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein”
2nd: Logan Manchester ’19 — “The ‘Other’ on the Island and in the Attic”
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