The English Department is excited to announce the winners of the 2017 MSU Student Literary Competitions.
The poetry competition was judged by MSU alum Alexandra Teague, author of The Wise and Foolish Builders: Poems and The Principles Behind Flotation: A Novel. Five finalists were sent to Teague, and she selected graduate student Brandon Henry’s entry “Stand for New Anthem” as the winner. Of Henry’s poem, Teague writes,
“Stand for New Anthem” skillfully uses the layerings and divisions of the villanelle form to enact this difficult political and environmental moment in our “indivisible nation”: suspending and playing with the distance between “examination” and “nation,” and questioning (with wonderful wording) the “mute ampersand” of social response that so often follows crisis.
Brandon Henry is an aspiring poet from Springfield, MO, returning in 2008 after living in Colorado. In a previous life, or what felt like one, he worked in finance for 10 years, first as an institutional trader and then later in compliance and administration. Brandon will be graduating from MSU in May 2018 with a Masters of English and is currently finalizing his thesis Gongshi Meditation on the American Prairie.
Finalists in the poetry competition include the following students:
- Shannon Ashley for “Prayer for My Mother on Her Way to Medjugorje”
- Anthony Isaac Bradley for “Wait One Week for Results”
- Seth Dowler for “Happiness”
- Hannah Hickman for “The Proof is in Pudding (or some other idiom my mom says)”
St. Louis native Anne Valente was the judge for this year’s fiction contest. Valente—who is reading at MSU tonight at 7 p.m. in the PSU Theater—is the author of By Light We Knew Our Names: Stories and Our Hearts Will Burn Us Down: A Novel. Valente chose graduate student Breea Schutt’s entry “Story Consumption” as the winner. Regarding Scutt’s story, Valente notes,
Detailing a mother’s management of her young daughter’s hunger for eating books, this story is an absolute delight. Inventive, imaginative and beautifully rendered, “Story Consumption” draws the reader in from the first sentence. I couldn’t put this story down.
Breea Schutt is graduating with her MA in Creative Writing this spring. Breea loves writing short stories containing magical realism and is currently working on a Young Adult manuscript. Aside from writing, she loves to read (duh!), play video games, vacation in Disney, and spend time with her family and friends. Oh, and she’s getting married in May, too!
This year’s fiction finalists include the following students:
- Kevin Davis for “Foundation Swimming”
- Abigail Eskew for “Ten-Step Program to Total Salvation”
- Brad Henderson for “Cherry”
- John King for “Blent”
- Kiah Mott for “Have Not”
- Robin Prandtl for “Dust Town”
Both Henry and Schutt’s work will appear in the forthcoming Moon City Review 2018 and each author will receive a $200 prize, as provided by the Department of English.