Department of English

Prizes

Department prizes and awards offer students opportunities to be recognized for their extraordinary research and writing. New prize cycles are available each semester.

Fall 2023 Prizes

Rome Prizes

David Rome

For the best lyric essay by a currently enrolled Brown undergraduate. This form includes essays written in poetical or experimental forms that emphasize artfulness.

  • 1st Place Winner: Fara Odunlami, "the crack"
  • 2nd Place Winner: Lucy Cooper-Silvas, "Invasive: A New Prayer for the Land"

Rose Low Rome

For the best poem or poems written by a currently enrolled Brown undergraduate. 

  • 1st Place Winner: Jules Griswold, "Five Poems for Saving Money"
  • 2nd Place Winner: Julian Ansorge, "How To Live"

Arlene Rome Ten Eyck & Peter H. Ten Eyck

For the best essay on literary theory by a currently enrolled Brown undergraduate. 

  • 1st Place Winner: Corinne Leong, "Take Everything Away: The Body without Organs and Liberatory Memory in Never Let Me Go"
  • 2nd Place Winner: Daniel Zheng, "The World Without Animals"

Deadline

Friday, December 1, 2023

Prizes

1st Prize $150

2nd Prize $50

Barbara Banks Brodsky Prizes

Barbara Banks Brodsky - Real-World Writing

Awarded to a full-time junior or senior. Submission may come from the spectrum of nonfiction: literary journalism, memoir, or narrative based on travel, science, history, and cultural critique. Submission should be limited to 3,000 words or less; can be a collection of brief pieces or one long piece.

  • Winner: Corinne Leong, "The Woman That Loves You"

Barbara Banks Brodsky - English

For the best essay on 20th-century English literature by a junior or senior.

  • Winner: Lucia Kan-Sperling, "“The more I observe…”: Defamiliarization and Artificial Intelligence in Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun"

Deadline

Friday, December 1, 2023

Prizes

1st Prize $800

Spring 2024

Preston Gurney Prizes

Fiction

For the best essay of 5,000 words or less on any topic in literary criticism (fiction) by a senior

  • 1st Place Winner: Solveig Asplund, “It’s always flowing in a stream, never the same”: Exploring Individualized Male Flow Through Urination, Ejaculation, and Bathing in Ulysses

Poetry

For the best essay of 5,000 words or less on any topic in literary criticism (poetry) by a senior 

  • 1st Place Winner: Julian Ansorge, “All we know / is that we are a little early:” Arriving Early to Ashbery’s “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror”
  • 2nd Place Winner: Everest Maya-Tudor, The Multidimensionality of Love in Chaucer’s “The Parliament of Fowls”

Cultural Criticism

For the best essay of 5,000 words or less on any topic in cultural criticism by a senior 

  • 1st Place Winner: Lucia Kan-Sperling, Contingency, Facticity, and the Productive Potential of the Encounter: Althusser, Daston, Wilson
  • 2nd Place Winner: Annie Stein, The Teenybopper Stage: Endless Male Pubescence in Mike Nichols' The Graduate

Deadline

Thursday, March 21, 2024

Prizes

1st Prize $1,000

2nd Prize $500

Betsy Amanda Lehman '77 Memorial Award for Excellence in Journalism

There are two first prizes for this award. One is for print and/or online written journalism and one is for audio/video journalism. Entries for the latter must be accompanied by a written script. Pieces will be judged on the strength of their reporting and writing. You must be a Brown senior to enter. Your submission may include one longer feature or a collection of no more than three shorter pieces. Extensive journalism experience or extensive journalism coursework is not required.

  • 1st Place Winner: Noble Brigham (print/online)
  • 2nd Place Winner: Nicholas Miller (print/online)

Deadline

Thursday, March 21, 2024

Prizes

1st Prize $1,000

2nd Prize $500

The Casey Shearer Memorial Award for Excellence in Creative Nonfiction

Awarded to a full-time Brown junior or senior for creative nonfiction of 3,000 words or less. Submission can be a collection of brief pieces or one long piece.

  • 1st Place Winner: Kathy Wang, A Growing History
  • 2nd Place Winner: Yutki V. Agarwal, 26/11

Deadline

Thursday, March 21, 2024

Prizes

1st Prize $1,000

2nd Prize $500

Rules

  1. One entry per competition. A separate entry form must be completed for each competition.
  2. Your name should not appear anywhere on the manuscript. 
  3. The university reserves the right to withhold any award.
  4. Manuscripts will be read by a committee of faculty members in the English Department. The committee's decisions will be final.
  5. Essays that have previously received an English Department award are not eligible.

No hard copies or late submissions will be accepted.