This year, students must use one of four paintings by Assistant Professor of Art Julio Suarez as inspiration for their submission. Courtesy | Pexels
The English Department is currently accepting prose and poetry submissions for its annual creative writing competition. Entries are due by 5:00 p.m. on Feb. 6.
Students may submit up to one poem and one work of prose, and winners will receive scholarship awards of up to $500. Associate Professor of English Kelly Franklin said faculty members will judge the entries on various qualities, including insight, rhythm, originality and creativity, depth of feeling, word choice, and polish.
This year, the competition will center around four paintings by Assistant Professor of Art Julio Suarez. Each entry must use one of the four paintings as a prompt.
“It really gives the students the freedom to spring from the image like a springboard,” Franklin said. “What emotions come up when you look at it — the underpass of a highway, an empty chair, a cluttered studio closet, a busy alleyway in Naples?”
Suarez said his paintings are usually just representations of what he sees. He said he doesn’t see a narrative in them, but is excited to see what students come up with.
“I think Dr. Franklin has definitely made it challenging for the students, and they will deliver; they will do it,” Suarez said. “I’m very excited to see what they do.”
This is the first time the competition has required students to write based on images.
“I think all of us write better with a prompt,” Franklin said. “Previously, it was just, ‘write a poem, write an essay, write a short story,’ and I think we’ve all had that experience of the intimidation of the blank page, the unlimited possibility.”
Junior Brett Schaller entered the competition for the first time last year and won the Margaret Weymouth Jackson Award in Creative Writing for his sonnet, “When I consider the end of my days.” He said he was shocked when he won.
“I think it was my first time making a serious effort to write a poem,” Schaller said.
Senior Katy Borobia won two awards last year for a poem and a short story she wrote about Calexico, the California border town where her dad grew up. Her sonnet, “Calexico,” won the Barnes Award for Metered Poetry, and her short story, “Rumors of Resurrection” won the Carlotta and Alvin Ewing English Award for Short Stories. Borobia said that writing poetry improves her writing in other areas too.
“You become creative with word choice,” Borobia said. “You start to think in meter and rhyme.”
Borobia said writing also makes art more meaningful.
“You start to see things differently,” she said. “Being able to describe something, an image, with words makes the image mean more to you than if you could just see it.”
Two previous winners, Elizabeth Genovise ’06 and Forester McClatchey ’16, are now published writers. They came back to campus in October 2021 through the Visiting Writers Program and shared their work with students.
Franklin said he hopes this year’s competition will attract the most students yet.
“I think — this is my suspicion — that there’s a fair number of students out there that are tinkering with poems or short stories or plays, and they never really let the world see it,” Franklin said. “This is a chance to let the world see it, and to be read, because that’s really why we write. We write to be read. You want, for a brief moment, someone else’s soul to resonate at the same frequency as your own. That’s why we write whatever we write.”
