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Clark University
Department of
English
kids writing

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.

How to Enter Your Work

  1. All submissions must be the student’s original work. Because all contest judging is done anonymously, we cannot accept previously published entries identifying the author. All entries must be unsigned.
  2. Two copies of each entry must be hand-delivered to the English Department office by the posted deadline. No handwritten or electronic entries will be accepted with the exception of students studying abroad. Students who are studying abroad may submit their contest entry forms and their entries electronically to ga_english@clarku.edu by the posted deadline.
  3. For drama, poetry, and short story submissions, complete the English Department Creative Writing Contest Entry Form. For essay submissions, complete the English Department Leroy Allston Ames Essay Contest Entry Form. Entry forms are also available in the English Department office.
  4. Missing information will disqualify your entry.
  5. No entries will be returned. The English Department may present or publish winning entries. Contest winners will be invited to present their winning entries at Academic Spree Day.
  6. If, in the opinion of the judges, none of the entries in a particular category is deserving of an award, none shall be given.

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 : 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’”

Previous Winners

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:  Chukwuma Egbuzie ’19 — “9DIGITS”

2nd:  Rachel Lloyd ’20 — “Click!”

3rd:  Davina Tomlin ’20 — “Cassandra”

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”

Contact Information

Department of English

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