Congratulations to this year’s winners of IUSB’s 2024 Student Writing Awards! Submissions were first screened by English department faculty, with final selections made by this year’s judge, Jennifer Oakes. Oakes is a poet and novelist who has won several awards for her work, including the Four Lakes Prize in Poetry (for her book The Declarable Future) and the Brittingham Prize in Poetry (for The Mouths of Grazing Things). Awards Night will take place this Thursday, April 18th, in Wiekamp Hall 1001. A reception begins at 5:30 and the awards ceremony and poetry reading by Jennifer Oakes begins at 6:00 PM. The 2024 edition of Analecta, IUSB’s student literary magazine, will also be revealed during the event.
Undergraduate Poetry
First Place: Madi Bandera, “A Cosmic Poem for My Father”
Second Place: Robin Dubree, “To Make Your Bed and Lie in It”
Third Place: Robin Dubree, “Apprehension is My Middle Name”
Honorable Mention: Madi Bandera, “My Mother Was Born From A Star”
Honorable Mention: Jacob Nava, “Humans”
Honorable Mention: Jacob Nava, “Late Fall”
Honorable Mention: JeniSue Teegarden, “Infected”
Honorable Mention: Robin Dubree, “Sand Castle, Erased by the Tide”
Undergraduate Fiction
First Place: Jessie Jimenez, “The Mortician”
Second Place: Lindsey Les (L.A. Culver), “Vessels”
Undergraduate Nonfiction
First Place: Alexis Martin, “Crumbs”
Second Place: JeniSue Teegarden, “Cows Have Teats”
Undergraduate Drama
First Place: Bobby Simons, “Bland Theft”
Graduate Poetry
First Place: Amanda Jones, “Maybe Today”
Second Place: Brooke Plummer, “A Tilted Earth”
Third Place: Babu Sarker (Fr. Pascal), “The Meaning in Nothingness”
Honorable Mention: Jo Hackett, “Big Brothers”
Graduate Fiction
First Place: Jessica Kado, “Faith No More”
Second Place: Candice Slovinski, “Self-Love”
Third Place: Babu Sarker (Fr. Pascal), “The Storyteller”
Honorable Mention: Jo Hackett, “The Bowling Story”
Graduate Nonfiction
First Place: Missy Hatfield, “Legacy: A Life in Ten Items or Less”
Second Place: Andrea Meyer, “The King”
The Deadline 