2019 Barnard Department of English Awards
A special congratulations to Eleanor Stern for winning a Fulbright scholarship to Bulgaria!
Each year, the English Department awards named prizes to a few English majors in recognition of their scholarship and accomplishments. The prizes requiring writing submissions are open to those not majoring in English as well.
College-wide Awards
THE ALENA WELS HIRSCHORN PRIZE
For a graduating senior major in Economics with a preference for a student who has a strong interest in English literature and/or pursuing a career in journalism
Winner: Ankita Acharya
THE SCHWIMMER PRIZE
For an outstanding graduating senior in the humanities who exemplifies a scholarly commitment to the humanist tradition
Winner: Perry Levitch
ANNETTE KAR BAXTER MEMORIAL PRIZE
For a member of the Junior Class in any field who has distinguished herself (on a paper or project) in the study of some aspect of women's experience
Winner: Aydan Shahd
Departmental Awards
The ESTELLE M. ALLISON PRIZE
For excellence in literature
Winner: Loie Plautz
The WILLIAM HALLER PRIZE
Awarded annually by the Barnard English Department to a graduating senior for excellence in the study of English Literature
Winners: Juliana Kaplan, Claire Phillips, Sara Samuel, Leah Schwartz
The W. CABELL GREET PRIZE
To a major for excellence in English
Winner: Eleanor Stern
The ES CARRIGAN PRIZE
For graduate work in English
Winners: Sylvia Korman (BC'18), Sophia Richards (BC'18)
The SAINT AGATHA-MURIEL BOWDEN MEMORIAL PRIZE
For superior proficiency in the study of Chaucer and Medieval literature
Winner: Alice Izzo
The STAINS-BERLE MEMORIAL PRIZE IN ANGLO-SAXON
For excellence in Anglo-Saxon language and literature
Winner: Elizabeth McNamara
Writing Prizes
The DORIS E. FLEISCHMAN PRIZE
For the student at Barnard judged by the Faculty of the English Department to have written the best short piece, fiction or non-fiction
Winner: Sara Samuel
The AMY LOVEMAN MEMORIAL FUND PRIZE
For the best original poem by a Barnard undergraduate
Winner: Radhika Shah
The LENORE MARSHALL BARNARD PRIZES
In prose and poetry
- Prose winners: Hayley Tillet, Allison Yeh
- Poetry winners:
First Place: Jade Levine, Mya Nunnally
Second Place: Perry Levitch
Third Place: Radhika Shah
Honorable Mentions: Eleanor Botomon, Charlotte Rauner, Leah Schwartz, Johanna Zwirner
The SIDNEY MINER POETRY PRIZE
To the senior major who has shown distinction in the reading, writing, & study of poetry
Winner: Perry Levitch
The HELEN PRINCE MEMORIAL PRIZE
For excellence in dramatic composition
Winner: Brooke Henzell
The HOWARD M. TEICHMANN WRITING PRIZE
To a graduating senior for work distinguished in its originality of concept and excellence of execution
Winners: Carolina Gonzalez, Eden Gordon, Claire Phillips, Veronica Suchodolski
Prizes Based on Submissions
Awarded by Outside Judges:
The PETER S. PRESCOTT PRIZE FOR PROSE WRITING
For a work of prose fiction which gives the greatest evidence of creative imagination and sustained ability
- 1st Place: Spencer George
- 2nd Place: Willa Cuthrell-Tuttleman, Veronica Suchodolski
- 3rd Place: Eden Gordon, Johanna Zwirner
- Honorable mentions: Mo Crist, Brooke Henzell, Allison Yeh
The HELENE SEARCY PULS PRIZE
For the best poem in an annual student competition
Winners: Jade Levine, Perry Levitch, Mya Nunnally, Radhika Shah
Judged by Departmental Committee:
The BURNS SOCIETY PRIZE
Awarded to three Barnard or Columbia students who write the best papers on topics related to the poetry of the eighteenth-century Scottish poet Robert Burns
- 1st Place: Andrew Fedorov
- 2nd Place: Isabelle Stromberg
- 3rd Place: Lyric Bowditch
The BRANDT PLAYWRITING AWARD
To the student who writes the most promising one-act play
Winner: Phanesia Pharel
Judges for the 2019 Prizes
Prose Judges
Liana Finck
Liana Finck is a cartoonist. Her work appears regularly in the New Yorker and on her Instagram feed. Her latest graphic novel, Passing for Human, was published in 2018.
Nellie Hermann
Nellie Hermann, Creative Director of the Program in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University, has 
published two novels, The Cure for Grief (Scribner, 2008) and The Season of Migration (FSG, 2015), a New York Times Editor's Choice. Her non-fiction has appeared in an anthology about siblings, Freud’s Blindspot (Free Press: 2010), as well as in Academic Medicine. Over the last ten years she has taught fiction and narrative medicine to undergraduates, medical students, graduate students, and clinicians of all sorts, and has given conference addresses in Iowa, California, Seoul, Korea, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a 2016 NEA Literature fellowship and a 2017-18 Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library.
Malena Watrous
Malena Watrous is the author of the novel If You Follow Me, which received a Michener-Copernicus Award, and the young adult novel Sparked. She frequently reviews books for such publications as The New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. She received an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was a Truman Capote Fellow, and a Stegner Fellowship from Stanford, where she is currently the lead instructor helping to run the Online Creative Writing program for their continuing studies department.
Poetry Judges
Brionne Janae
Brionne Janae is a poet and teaching artist living in Brooklyn. She is the recipient of the 2016 St. Botoloph Emerging Artist award, a Hedgebrook and Vermont Studio Center Alumni and proud Cave Canem Fellow. Her poetry and prose have been published by the Academy of American Poets, the American Poetry Review, the Sun Magazine, the Los Angelas Review Rattle, Bitch Magazine, The Cincinnati Review, jubilat, Sixth Finch, Plume, Bayou Magazine, The Nashville Review, Waxwing, and Redivider among others. Brionne’s first collection is titled After Jubilee and was published by Boaat Press. www.brionnejanae.com
Alicia Mountain
Alicia Mountain is the author of the collection High Ground Coward (Iowa 2018), which won the Iowa Poetry Prize, and the chapbook Thin Fire (BOAAT Press 2018). She is a lesbian poet, a PhD candidate, and an assistant editor of the Denver Quarterly. Keep up with her at aliciamountain.com and @HiGroundCoward.
Alicia Jo Rabins
Alicia Jo Rabins (BC'98, English/creative writing) is a poet, composer and performer based in Portland, Oregon. She is the author of two poetry collections, Divinity School (2015 APR/Honickman First Book Prize) and Fruit Geode (Jewish Book Award finalist), and holds a MFA in Poetry from Warren Wilson College and a MA in Jewish Women's and Gender Studies from JTS. She is the creator of Girls in Trouble, an indie-folk song cycle about Biblical women, and A Kaddish for Bernie Madoff, a one-woman chamber-rock opera about finance and mysticism. Find her at www.aliciajo.com.