January 22, 2009

Writing contest open to Purdue, Indiana high school students

Students from Purdue University and Indiana high schools are invited to submit their writing to the 78th annual Literary Awards contest, which features more than 70 awards, totaling more than $10,000 in prize money. 

The deadline for submission is 5 p.m. Feb. 13. The categories cover a wide range of fields for undergraduate and graduate students, including fiction, poetry, philosophy, literary criticism, history, and rhetoric and composition. Complete contest guidelines and information can be found at https://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/literaryawards/rules.html

Indiana high school teachers who are interested in more information can contact Christian Knoeller, associate professor of English and curriculum and instruction, at knoeller@purdue.edu.

The awards will be presented at the Literary Awards Banquet at 5:30 p.m. April 15 in the Purdue Memorial Union's North Ballroom. Rita Dove, Pulitzer-prize winning poet and U.S. poet laureate, is the featured speaker. She will address the winners at the banquet and afterwards give a talk, which is free and open to the public, at 8 p.m. in Stewart Center's Fowler Hall. Each award winner will receive a complimentary ticket to the banquet. Other banquet tickets are $15 for students and $25 for adults, and they can be purchased in Heavilon Hall, Room 324, or by calling the Department of English at (765) 494-3740.

Dove, a Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia, served as U.S. poet laureate and consultant to the Library of Congress from 1993 to 1995. She also was poet laureate of Virginia from 2004 to 2006. She received the 1987 Pulitzer Prize in poetry for "Thomas and Beulah," a collection of interrelated poems loosely based on her grandparents' lives.

She also is the recipient of Duke Ellington Lifetime Achievement Award, the Heinz Award in the Arts and Humanities, the National Humanities Medal, and the Commonwealth Award of Distinguished Service.

Writer: Amy Patterson Neubert, (765) 494-9723, apatterson@purdue.edu

Sources: Bich Minh Nguyen, (765) 496-1651, nguyenb@purdue.edu

Christian Knoeller, (765) 494-3779, knoeller@purdue.edu

Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu

To the News Service home page