RC Students Win Writing Awards from Sweetland and Honors
Sweetland Center for Writing Granader Family Undergraduate Writing Prize Winners:
Wisteria Deng, RC senior, "Six Reasons"
Zofia Ferki, RC junior, "As Time Ticks By"
Rita Mei Hathaway, RC freshman, ""The Spectrum Center: Enriching the Campus Experience"
Deirdre McGovern, RC senior, "What We Learn from the Mouse"
LSA Honors Program Virginia Voss Award for a Senior Woman's Honors Thesis:
Aparna Sridharan, RC senior, "First Generation Elegies: A Lyric Essay"
"I'm Wisteria Deng from China, a RC senior, Psychology major and Creative Writing poetry track. I'm starting a new job at the Mass General Hospital following graduation. The piece I wrote was an effort to make peace with the past, after too many failed attempts to write about my father's passing. I know now that the Pandora's box has been cracked, he will always reside in my writing like hope lurking in the box. For this, I owe Leslie Stainton the rest of my writing life. Thank you my life mentor and best friend."
Wisteria's essay, "Six Reasons", won the Sweetland Matt Kelley/Granader Family Prize. RC Creative Writing faculty, Leslie Stainton, says "With its powerful sensory details, beautiful storytelling, and authorial candor and humility, the piece exemplifies the traits of the best essay-writing."
"My name is Zofia Ferki and I am a rising junior double-majoring in Creative Writing and German. I am from Charlottesville, VA, and this summer I will be interning at the Estrel Berlin in Germany as the English editor for the hotel and conference center there.
Receiving this award has been a huge encouragement for me to continue to pursue my passion of writing. It is a great joy and feeling to be able to engage in something I love and have the product of my work be meaningful to those around me as well."
Leslie Stainton describes Zofia's essay, "As Time Ticks By", another winner of the Matt Kelley/Granader Family Prize, as "a marvelously charming, yet moving, essay that ends on a surprisingly sobering note."
"My name is Deirdre McGovern and I'm a graduating RC senior in Biopsychology, Cognition, and Neuroscience, and a minor in Creative Writing. My hometown is Boston, Massachusetts. After graduation I will be working for CityYear Chicago.
This honor was very exciting for me because it signified the importance of creating accessible scientific writing for the general public, especially for causes such as conservation that might otherwise not get a voice."
These honors, alongside the 10 Hopwood Awards given to RC students last week, showcase the high level of the RC's contributions to the art of writing at University of Michigan.
