CONWAY, Ark. (February
10, 2020) — Three Hendrix College student writers and one student publication
have received awards in the 2020 Southern Literary Festival competition.
Liam Carey ’20
earned a Second Place award in Poetry for “Watching California Burn,” Joshua
Barnett ’20 took Second Place in Short Story for “Baby in Bloom,” and Zelda
Engeler-Young ’21 garnered Third Place in Creative Nonfiction for “The Anxious
Anemic’s Field Guide to the Tallgrass Prairie.”
The Aonian, the College’s student-produced
campus literary magazine, received First Place in the Print Journal category;
the 2019 edition had Peyton Coffman ’19 as editor-in-chief and Kaitlin Lowe ’20
as associate editor. The Aonian is
published using allotted student activity fees, and copies are available on
campus at no charge.
The genre winners
will have the opportunity to read at the festival, held in April at Delta State
University in Cleveland, Miss., and their work will be included in the festival
anthology.
Faculty members from
the Hendrix Department of English offered praise for the winners.
“Liam Carey has
approached writing poetry with exceptional maturity and serious devotion to
poetic craft, while helping other students shape their poems through his contributions
in our writing workshop,” said Erin Hoover, Murphy Visiting Fellow in Poetry
and professor of Carey’s Poetry Writing course. “It’s affirming for all of our
poets at Hendrix to see Liam’s talent and diligence rewarded with this kind of
recognition.”
“What I love
about psychology major Joshua Barrett’s short story ‘Baby in Bloom’ is how this
tale about a dysfunctional family oscillates between the whimsical and the
surreal,” said Tyrone Jaeger, associate professor of English/creative writing
and director of the Creative Writing Program. “For all the technicolor strangeness
Josh creates, ultimately he’s crafted a tender portrait of a family’s ache and
loss.”
“I’m thrilled
that Zelda’s essay has won this recognition,” said Hope Coulter, director of
Hendrix-Murphy Programs and assistant professor of English-creative writing. “She
started writing the piece in my ‘Writer as Witness’ class—an account of her
experience on a biology field project in the Flint Hills—and has revised and
polished it since then. As a Murphy Scholar in Literature and Language, Zelda
gets additional support and resources to pursue her passion for writing. For
example, she’s learning a lot about editing and publishing right now through
her internship at the Oxford American
magazine. It’s exciting to see her own work finding its place in the world.”
“I couldn’t be
happier to see the Aonian win first
place,” Jaeger said of the literary magazine’s honor. “While it’s always a joy
to see individuals get acknowledged, when the Aonian wins, we all win. Editor-in-Chief Peyton Coffman, Associate
Editor Kaitlin Lowe, and the Aonian
staff put together a brilliant issue, featuring so many talented writers and
artists across the Hendrix campus.”
About the Southern Literary Festival
The first
Southern Literary Festival was held in April of 1937 at Blue Mountain College.
Authors associated with the festival have included Eudora Welty, Shelby Foote,
Katherine Anne Porter, John Gould Fletcher, and Flannery O’ Connor, as well
founding member Robert Penn Warren. Originally celebrating the traditionally
Southern, the festival has expanded to include a broader, more diverse portrait
of what it means to hail from the American South and to write from a Southern
perspective. For more information, visit www.southernliteraryfestival.org.
About Hendrix College
A private liberal
arts college in Conway, Arkansas, Hendrix College consistently earns
recognition as one of the country’s leading liberal arts institutions, and is
featured in Colleges
That Change Lives: 40 Schools That Will Change the Way You Think About
Colleges.
Its academic quality and rigor, innovation, and value have established Hendrix
as a fixture in numerous college guides, lists, and rankings. Founded in 1876,
Hendrix has been affiliated with the United Methodist Church since 1884. To
learn more, visit www.hendrix.edu.