News

Zita Arocha

• Winner of the 2021 Eilud Martínez Prize given by the Inlandia Institue for her memoir Guajira: the Cuba Girl, her MFA thesis. https://inlandiainstitute.org/eliud-martinez-prize-2021-winner/

• Professor José de Piérola, in collaboration with Sun Cok, published a translation of Dracula by Bram Stoker with Lluvia Editores.

• Current Online MFA's student Ana Lucía Cagnoli was awarded third place in the Concurso de Letras del Fondo Nacional de las Artes (Argentina) for her book Media y extrema razón. More info, here.
• Former CRW Master Program's student Saúl Hernández won the 2021 Two Sylvias Chapbook Prize.
• Former CRW Master Program's student María Isabel Pachón Varón won the Premio Internacional de Novela Breve “Rosario Castellanos” 2021 by her novel Sobre tierra quemada.

Foto: María Ramos Pacheco

• Former CRW Master Program's student David Cruz won the Premio Internacional Manuel Acuña 2020 by his poetry book Lazarus. To read The Prospector interview, click here.

• Current CRW Master Program's student Alaíde Ventura won the Premio Maurizio Achar by her novel Entre los rotos. Read an interview here.

• To foster the appreciation and practice of writing, the Department of Creative Writing is launching its “2020 Bilingual Creative Writing Awards.” The competition, open to all graduate students, will accept original, unpublished work. The prizes will include a monetary award, an award letter, and publication. 

         
           Foto: Andrés D'Elia

• Colombian writer Óscar Godoy Barbosa, former CRW Master Program's student, recently won the Premio Ñ-Ciudad de Buenos Aires 2019 by his last novel Te acuerdas del mar awarded by the prestigious Argentinian journal Clarín. This book addresses the life as a sequel of the guerrilla violence and its implications.

• Very recently, Professor Paula Cucurella has had the opportunity of presenting parts of the research for her book (tentative title: Poetry in Times of War. The Literary Maxim) at The American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) annual conference.  Some poems and paintings from Dr. Cucurella’s first —and still unpublished—poetry book were published on the online literary magazine Marcapiel, issued recently in February. In the same magazine, Cucurella published  an interview with David Johnson (University of New York at Buffalo). In addition, with occasion of the anniversary of Nicanor Parra’s death, the Chilean news site  eldesconcierto.cl, published Cucurella's column“La Antipoesía: una poesía pasivo-agresiva”, where she highlights the sexist and homophobic aspects of Nicanor Parra's poetry

• Professor  Lex   Williford was recently chosen as a Mentor for the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) for Spring 2019. AWP's mentorship program, Writer to Writer, matches emerging writers and published authors for a three-month series of modules on topics such as craft, revision, publishing, and the writing life.  Prof.  Williford  has also served two years as a member of the Fellows Council for the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA), which serves as a point of communication between Fellows and the VCCA board and administration, advising the board regarding matters of vital importance to Fellows in residence.

• Prof.  Williford ’s novella,  Balsa and Tissue Paper,  is also forthcoming in Fall 2019 as a  Ploughshares  Solo, both as an ebook and part of the long-form perfect-bound edition of  Ploughshares , edited by Ladette Randolph, who founded the series to create a venue for writers of novellas and longer-form creative nonfiction

• Professor Sasha Pimentel, from CRW Program, has been awarded a Creative Writing Fellowship in poetry by the National Endowment of the Arts, which supports our nation’s poets and encourages a wide range of voices and styles.

• Our professors Rosa Alcala, and Tim Hernandez were inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters (TIL), a nonprofit honor society that recognizes and celebrates literature in Texas. Induction is based on literary accomplishments, according to the group’s website. The TIL’s elected membership consists of the state’s most respected writers of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, journalism  and  scholarship.