Congratulations to the winners of the ninth annual Mark and Melody Teppola Prizes in Creative Writing at Willamette University:
Poetry, judged by Jennifer Foerster, author of The Maybe-Bird
First Prize: “Sestina of Vermillion” by Rowan Spangler
Judge’s comments: The poet skillfully engages the sestina form to generate the fluid circularity that is interior thought. In this poem, that interiority is the lucid bewilderment of the self, seeking to know oneself. The personal particulars of the speaker’s world and unique perspective command the reader’s attention, allowing the end-word repetitions to enact the poem’s transformations with subtlety. The poem maintains, despite the limitations required of the sestina, a consistently candid and contemplative voice that is further compelling by the poem’s syntactically interesting and articulate long lines.
Second Prize: “Becoming Abandonable” by Sydney Bell
Judge’s comments: Through the poem’s exacting attention to pattern, structure, rhythm, and luminous particulars, the speaker wields the reigns of powerful refusal. Through mechanisms of intensification, I am compelled through the density of the prose-poem form and the accumulating, berating directives, making the end’s surprising twist especially potent.
Third Prize: “spilled milk” by Arlo Craft
Judge’s comments: I appreciate how this poet works with fragment and imagery to navigate memory and loss. A notable strength of this poem is its finesse of line and caesura to support the poem’s voice while also generating a rhythmic pulse that carries the reader deeper into the speaker’s emotional landscape.
Prose (Fiction & Nonfiction), judged by Annie Dawid, author of Paradise Undone
First Prize: “Are We There Yet?” By Sacha Alialani Des Pres
Judge’s comments: The annual family Christmas trip to Grandma's used as a lens through which the reader observes a mother-daughter relationship as it unfurls over many years, spiced with humor and irony, as indicated by its title. The connection between these two women strains and frays but remains durable, depicted with loving nuance.
Second Prize: “The Iron Casket” by Taylor Hering
Judge’s comments: An out-of-time story in which both past and future collide. A Melvillean seagoing tale in the best sense: exploring character in its depths, both hopeful and nihilistic, while keeping the reader enthralled. Also has shades of Garcia-Marquez’s “The Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”; both nods to these great short story writers pay respect without being imitative.
Third Prize: “Betrayals” by Sadie Marks
Judge’s comments: A short-short story uncovering a key childhood familial scene, which focuses on the fleeting beauty of both nature and life itself. The dying baby birds and their ultimate end depicts the father’s love for his children in a sharp exposure of necessary violence.
Please congratulate our winners!
We are grateful to Mark and Melody Teppola for the generous gift that makes these prizes possible.