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.
The number of submissions per student is limited to one essay.
Prizes: $500/$300/$200
Current Winners
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”
Previous Winners
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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