Submitted by Calvin Pollak
on
Every year, Department of English students publish, translate, collaborate, reshape, and transgress. As they do, their work crosses disciplinary, institutional, methodological, and generic boundaries. In the roundup that follows, I draw attention to some of the students' many fabulous accomplishments and projects this academic year. Kudos and thank-you to them for deepening the intellectual life of the UW and beyond.
UW and National Awards and Recognition
- Rasheena Fountain, English literature and culture PhD candidate, was awarded a 2026 Sundress Academy for the Arts Residency Fellowship for her dissertation In the Dropped Down (qWátub) Aftermath: An Anticolonial and Ecological Blues. Fountain was also selected for the 2026 Jack Straw Writers program. Additionally, Fountain performed "Speculative Land Blues" in the Henry Art Museum's Speculative Landscapes series. To top it all off, Fountain's blues guitar and poetry film Dropped Down Blues was featured on Episode 2 of the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment (ASLE) Spotlight series. (Fountain's section of the podcast begins at 08:23; the video is embedded below.)
PhD candidate Furkan Kir was awarded a Dissertation Writing Support Grant from the National Federation of Modern Language Teachers Associations and the Modern Language Journal for his project, Beyond Language Proficiency: An In-Depth Intersectional Inquiry into Marginalized Students Belonging Experiences at an English-Medium University. This competitive grant supports graduate students in applied linguistics and language education during the dissertation writing stage.
Publications
- Mia Nelson's debut poetry collection, I've Never Loved Somebody and Made Them Worse, was published on October 15, 2025 from Broadstone Books. Daisy Alpert Florin, the author of My Last Innocent Year, calls the book, "An intimate and sensuous collection exploring the many permutations of love."
- Kexin Song's translations of seven poems by Ding Cheng were published in the Fall 2025 issue of Exchanges: A Journal of Literary Translations.
- Jaden McGinty's story "Five Salmon Dancing" was published in Issue 29 - Bestiary of the Dark Mountain Project.
- Andrés Ayala-Patlán published two book reviews in the University of Toronto Quarterly, vol. 94, no. 3: "Beyond Human: Decentring the Anthropocene in Spanish Ecocriticism Ed. by Maryanne L. Leone and Shanna Lino (Review)" and "A Planetary Avant Garde: Experimental Literature Networks and the Legacy of Iberian Colonialism by Ignacio Infante (Review)".
- Frank Amofa Sarpong published the article "Representation of Indigeneity in the Postcolonial Detective Novel: A Literary Analysis of Nii Ayikwei Parkes' Tail of the Blue Bird", co-authored with Nadia Abass and Rogers Asempasah, in Vol. 1 Issue 1 of Kente: Cape Coast Journal of Literature and the Arts.
- Braden Bomgaars published the article "Story Exchange Walls: Bridging Community and Carceral Spaces through Writing", co-authored with Tobi Jacobi, in Vol 6. Issue 4 of Feminist Pedagogy.
- Siddharth Bhogra published the article "Extracting Publishing Data from the English Catalogue of Books", co-authored with Anna Preus and John Carlyle, in Journal of Open Humanities Data Vol. 12, no. 1.
Simpson Center Awards
Society of Scholars Summer Fellowship
- Ishita Lahiri: Reimagining Bad Work: Speculative Narratives and Labor in South Asia
- Amelia Lehosit: "For Not All Tears are an Evil": The Making of Consolation in Old English Lyric and Beyond
- Sikose Mjali: The Living Archive: Unsilencing: Sechaba (1967-1990) and the Voices of the African National Congress Underground
Graduate Creative Writing Awards
- Academy of American Poets Prize: Anne Duncan
- Eugene Van Buren Prize for Fiction: Abby Cheng
- David Guterson Award (prose): Olivia Bell
- Nelson Bentley MFA Award in Creative Writing (prose): Jaden McGinty
- Nelson Bentley MFA Award in Creative Writing (poetry): Hannah Messinger
- Joan Grayston Poetry Prize: Sean Fortenberry
English Department Undergraduate Awards and Scholarships
Undergraduate Awards
- Hilen Essay Prize: Rory Nelson
- Honors Thesis Prize: Ailis Murray
Undergraduate Scholarships
- Eilert Anderson Scholarship: "Dolkar" Samten T.
- Edward G. Cox Scholarship: Talulla Shaughnessy
- Argentina Daley Endowed Fund: Christian Mireles-Mendoza
- Dave and Joan Empfield Endowed Scholarship: Alyssa Quach
- Gamma Phi Beta - Winnifred S. Haggett Scholarship: Ava Robinson
- Robert B. Heilman Endowed Scholarship: Kathryn Cook
- Kollar Endowed Scholarship: Amelia Duncan
- Charles H. Krysieniel Endowed Scholarship in LGBT Studies: Madeline Atkinson
- Roger Sale Scholarship: Audrey Rauh
- Peter L. Thorpe Endowed Scholarship: Kathryn Cook
- Tia Vall-Spinosa Sullivan Endowed Scholarship: Madeline De Pauw
- Lucky Budd Waller Scholarship: Emily Gauthier
- John Kimball Woolley and Afton Woolley Crooks Endowed Scholarship: Kathryn Cook, Alyssa Quach, Audrey Rauh, Emily Gauthier, Madeline De Pauw, Ava Robinson, Olivia Ellison, "Dolkar" Samten T., Christian Mireles-Mendoza
Undergraduate Creative Writing Awards and Scholarships
- Joan Grayston Poetry Prize: Zoe Friedland
- Edith K. Draham Scholarship: Kailani Marson
- Stephanie Dassel Barden Scholarship in Creative Writing: Jaya Parsons
- Eugene Van Buren Prize for Fiction: Tiffany Chen
- Eugene Van Buren Prize for Fiction (2): Piper Sorensen
- Charlotte Paul Reese Fiction Award: AnnaReese Whitman
- Arthur Oberg Award for Poetry: Kailani Marson
- Arthur Oberg Award for Poetry (2): Emily Gauthier