Fondren Library Literary Excellence Showcase
Wednesday, April 15 at 4pm
Brown Fine Arts Stage in 3rd floor Fondren
Winners will read their work. We have drinks and snacks. See the rare book petting zoo and make a souvenir print!
The winner of the Max Apple Prize in Nonfiction is Abigail King.
The winner of the Larry McMurtry Prize in Fiction and the Susan Wood Prize in Poetry is Chi Pham.
The winner of the Paul Otremba Award for Literary Citizenship is Avalon Hogans.
The winner of the Larry McMurtry Prize in Fiction is Chi Pham for "Man Spelt Backwards".
Clare Beams writes: "The protagonist of 'Man Spelt Backwards' is struggling to claim a self amidst the kinds of hauntings that live underneath the skin. What caught me first here is the richness of the images: this is a writer able to render the full sensory sweep of experience in language. What moved me tremendously by the story's end is the way self-definition leads to a sort of empathetic reconnection with the world, despite every understanding of its brokenness."
The winner of the Max Apple Prize in Nonfiction is Abigail King for "Can You Hear the Music?"
Esmé Weijun Wang writes: "Before reading this essay, Charles Bonnet syndrome was entirely unknown to me — and I suspect the same is true for most readers. Yet within its pages, I found myself not only educated but genuinely moved. This piece does something rare: it explains a complex neurological experience with clarity and care, then opens outward into the broader territories of water and music — exploring how CBS reshapes one's relationship with the elemental and the cultural alike. It is an essay about perception, yes, but more profoundly, it is about how our limitations and our gifts are often the same thing, and how understanding one can expand our capacity for the other."
The winner of the Susan Wood Prize in Poetry is Chi Pham.
Judge Jess Smith writes: "The opening poem in the packet, 'L’Ange de Neiges' (French for _snow angel_) captivates with the clarity and immediacy of its first line: 'My mother bathed other people’s mothers for eleven dollars' – here is a poet whose voice I want to hear, and whose narrative I trust immediately. Each of these poems move with a rare steadiness of gaze. They are unflinching in their attention and precise in their language. Each line feels measured and exact, but never sterile; instead, the clarity sharpens their emotional force. The speaker lingers on difficult truths – a young woman hemorrhaging, a dry-cleaning receipt left behind by a dead father – without ornament or retreat, finding lyric beauty not by softening reality, but by rendering it faithfully. The formal choices and enjambment, particularly at the end of 'Italian Lambskin Leather Gloves,' recall Robert Hass’s wedding of exactitude and visual play. The overall result is a body of work that is both intimate and unsparing, packed with images a reader will not soon forget."
The winner of the Paul Otremba Award for Literary Citizenship is Avalon Hogans.
Faculty judges write: "Avalon Hogans is a resonant artist. A former youth poet laureate of Houston, Avalon has created research, writing, art, and theatrical performances that have impacted Rice in profound ways. At every turn, Avalon has shown herself to be equal parts curious, caring and tenacious. She takes people, people’s patterns, the possibilities of place so seriously. Avalon Hogan’s work bounces readers from confessional to institutional critique to suspenseful revelation as Morrison says, “without the work sweating.” Avalon writes through Florida, through Kentucky, through her own historic neighborhood in Houston with radical love and a playful eye. Avalon Hogan is the now and the future of literary art and the epitome of what curious writers with a love of place can become. She is so very, very, very good at what writers are called to do."