Jane Wong (Ph.D 2016) has been chosen as the 2017 Graduate Medalist in the Humanities. This award is given each year to the most exceptional graduate student in the Humanities Division at the University of Washington.
Wong defended her dissertation in Fall 2016; its title is "Going Toward the Ghost: The Poetics of Haunting in Contemporary Asian American Poetry." Her first book of poetry, Overpour, was published earlier this year, and she has won numerous literary awards, including the 2016 Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize from American Poetry Review. She will be starting as an Assistant Professor of English at Western Washington University this fall.
Graduate students from the Department of English have won this award three of the last four years. Rachel Arteaga won in 2016 and Todd Rygh in 2014.