2013 Landwehr Creative Writing Contest Winners Announced
Cal Poly’s English Department is proud to announce that English majors Whitney Lenet of Cayucos and Ian Delaney of Walnut Creek have won the 2013 Al Landwehr Creative Writing Contest.
Lenet’s poem “Strawberry Crash,” about the death of a relative, and Delaney’s story “Madrid Story,” about an unexpected pregnancy, both took $100 first place prizes.
According to contest director Kevin Clark, very few students ever start writing sophisticated poems as quickly as Whitney Lenet has.
“She’s among the best poets in the creative writing program,” he said, “because she blends imagery and sound so well—and because her poems are readily accessible while offering multiple meanings.”
Clark also said that Delaney is already highly accomplished in the art of fiction.
According to fiction judge Amy Wiley, Delaney’s story “uses a common, simple event--an unexpected pregnancy--to unfold an uncommonly textured and contextually complex story.”
Wiley said that Delaney’s piece spans “countries, cultures, and generations, providing an unflinching yet compassionate account of the relationships between parents and children under circumstances at once humanly ordinary and politically extraordinary.”
Poets Ryan Duschak (Culver City) and Eli Williams (Morro Bay) won second and third place respectively. Sarah Brown (San Jose) and Veronica Flores (Fresno) earned second and third in fiction.
All six winners will receive prize money, half of which is donated by poet and Poly grad Jocelyn Knowlton as well as her husband Bruce Knowlton of Knowlton Brothers Furniture in Nipomo.
Editors choices were also announced. Undergraduates Cate Harkins (San Luis Obispo), Allie Rogge (San Mateo), and Kara Erickson (Kamuela, HI) were all chosen in poetry. Double-selectee Cate Harkins was the sole editors choice in fiction.
Last year as a junior, Harkins was a winner in the poetry contest.
“Cate could have a big future as a sterling poet, fiction writer, and essayist,” said Clark
Named in honor of Al Landwehr, the nationally published, much loved creative writing professor who started the contest in the seventies, the competition is open to all students registered at Cal Poly.
Two separate English faculty judging committees, one for poetry and one for fiction, read the entries blind. This year, professors John Bartel, Megan Slocum and Dustin Stegner judged the poetry, while professors Jennifer Ashley, Carol Curiel, Johanna Rubba, and Amy Wiley judged the fiction.
The students will read their winning works and receive their prizes at the annual Creative Writing Contest Awards Reading, held later in May. The poems and stories will be published in Cal Poly’s literary annual Byzantium, which will be available free that night.