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English Department

2026 Writing Awards

Writing Awards Ceremony

Followed by an open reading coordinated by Aphros literary magazine.

$25,000 in awards including the NYC English Department Willis, Owens, Gill, Cannon, Rose Writing Awards, and the Academy of American Poets.

Refreshments will be served and all are welcome!

Friday, May 1
12:00 p.m.–2:00 p.m.
Bianco Room, 15 Beekman

Sarah Willis Award, Richard Gill Award, Gerard Cannon Award, James Rose Award, Billie and Curtis Owens Award, and The David A. Bickimer-Promise of Learnings/Academy of American Poets Prize

The Sarah Willis, Billie and Curtis Owens, Richard Gill, Gerard Cannon, and James Rose memorial funds, named in honor of distinguished English Department faculty, and the David A. Bickimer-Promise of Learnings/Academy of American Poets Prize.

Writing for Film and Television

  • Ethan Tierno, Gerard Cannon Award, 1st Place: The Singles Support Society
  • Ava Scott, Sarah Willis Award, 2nd Place: Athame
  • Cade Halvorson, Billie and Curtis Owens Award, 3rd Place: Slim Jim

Writing on Film

  • Ava Scott, Billie and Curtis Owens Award, 1st Place: “The Thirteenth Fairy: How ‘Maleficent’ Reimagines the Grimm Villainess”
  • Mya McBride, Gerard Cannon Award, 2nd Place: “Cat People (1942): Artistic Expression against 1940s Conformity”
  • Alex Emig, Richard Gill Award, 3rd Place: “Representing Historical Trauma through Animation”

Playwriting

  • Charlie Razhanskiy, Richard Gill Award, 1st Place: Co-Captains
  • Tristan Collins, Gerard Cannon Award, 2nd Place: Joan Darce’s GNOSIS
  • Sylvie Goodblatt, Billie and Curtis Owens Award, 3rd Place: Be My Baby
  • Ava Scott, James Rose Award, Honorable Mention: Love Bites

Nonfiction

  • Amelia Zachary, Richard Gill Award, 1st Place: “The Cronica”
  • Tamara Frieson, Billie and Curtis Owens Award, 2nd Place: “Last Offline Generation: How Wanting to Disconnect Made Me Feel Like the Odd One Out in a World That Never Logs Off”
  • Nathaniel Chase Augustin, Gerard Cannon Award, 3rd Place: “destroy after reading: sorriness ii: coal”
  • Marielette Sanchez, Sarah Willis, Honorable Mention: “Cronica”
  • Vivian Alatorre James Rose Award, Honorable Mention: “Charlie’s Angel”

Journalism

  • Scarlett Allen, Billie and Curtis Owens Award, 1st Place: “Pace Students Adapt to AI across Disciplines”
  • Tamara Frieson, Sarah Willis Award, 2nd Place: “When Innovation Collides with Institution”
  • Richard Mankiewicz, Richard Gill Award, 3rd Place: “AI and New Colonialism”
  • Max Graham, Gerard Cannon Award, Honorable Mention: “What It’s Like To Be an Art Student in This Day and Age”

Linguistic and Rhetorical Analysis

  • Scarlett Allen, Sarah Willis Award, 1st Place: “Framing and Metaphor in the Construction of Disney Adult Discourse Communities”
  • Vivian Alatorre, Billie and Curtis Owens Award, 2nd Place: “Talk to Me!’—Reexamining the Language Used by Genders in Conversation”
  • Ava Glass, Richard Gill Award, 3rd Place: “Semantic Change in the Classroom”
  • Chelsea Brown, Gerard Cannon Award, Honorable Mention: “How Parasocial Relationships Work Linguistically”

Fiction

  • Lily Fonseca, Gerard Cannon Award, 1st Place: “Stone Dust”
  • Ava Scott, Richard Gill Award, 1st Place: Awaken the Stars (Chapter 1 and Chapter 2
  • Laney Leone, Billie and Curtis Owens Award, 2nd Place: “Eight to Five”
  • Logan Dokes, Billie and Curtis Owens Award, 2nd Place: “Klappe”
  • Riley Fell, Sarah Willis Award, 3rd Place: “Look at Me, Looking at You”
  • Dakotah Hubbard, Sarah Willis Award 3rd Place: “Mary and Lily”
  • Aaron Glass, Gerard Cannon Award, Honorable Mention: “Like a Flying Mango”
  • Alec Conwell, James Rose Award, Honorable Mention: “Prologue”

Comics and Graphic Novels

Scripts

  • Jaden Tench, Richard Gill Award, 1st Place: Across Trains and Times
  • Lauren Young, Gerard Cannon Award, 2nd Place: Tokens of the Dead (Excerpt)
  • Joey Heaton, Sarah Willis Award, 2nd Place: Aeromancy & Out Some Time

Essays

  • Ava Scott, Gerard Cannon Award, 1st Place: “Subverting the Binary: Queerness, Identity, and Moral Complexity in ND Stevenson’s Nimona”
  • Charlie Razhanskiy, Sarah Willis Award, 2nd Place: “The Cultural Attitudes of the 1980s, as Reflected in Uncanny X-Men #200”
  • Lauren Young, James Rose Award, 3rd Place: “The Art of the Desert: Technique and the Environment in Sand Land”
  • Chelsea Brown, Billie and Curtis Owens Award, Honorable Mention: “Snowbirds Don’t Fly and the War on Drugs”

Literary Criticism

  • Emilia Gillen, Sarah Willis Award, 1st Place: “How the Page Remembers: Written Monuments of Forgotten Pasts and Toni Morrison’s Beloved”
  • Alec Conwell, Richard Gill Award, 1st Place: “A Monster Outcast from Society: A Transgender Reading of Frankenstein”
  • J.D. Valdepenas, Gerard Cannon Award, 2nd Place: “Unhappy Wife, Happy Life: Unequal Distribution of Emotional Labor in Marie de France, Christine de Pizza, Taylor Swift, and Paris Paloma”
  • Molly Dunne, Sarah Willis Award, 2nd Place: “The tempters of the night”: Iachimo and the Violation of Private Space in William Shakespeare’s Cymbeline”
  • Chelsea Brown, Richard Gill Award, 3rd Place: Dreaming of Neverland: Childhood as Adult Fantasy and Imperial Longing in Peter Pan and the Limits of Children’s Literature”
  • Allison Romeo, Gerard Cannon Award, 3rd Place: “Pastoral Fantasies: Escapism and the Adult Psyche in the Works of J.M. Barrie and Arnold Lobel” and "Lineage, Empire, and the Myth of the English King”
  • Levi G., Billie and Curtis Owens Award, Honorable Mention: “Head Full of Colors: The Use of Free Indirect Discourse in Northanger Abbey"
  • Sam Yungmann, Billie and Curtis Owens Award, Honorable Mention: “The Impact of Trans Representation in Media: Fan Fiction and the Fluidity of Community”

Poetry

  • Isabel Peña, David A. Bickimer-Promise of Learnings /Academy of American Poets Prize: “Prairie Cloud Baby”
  • Riley Natalova, Gerard Cannon Award, 1st Place: “Collector,” “NYC is Burning,” “Althea’s Aubade” & “Earth Day”
  • Ana Von Stackelberg, Sarah Willis Award, 1st Place: “Poem for Sappho,” “Silver Mountain,” “The Death of Pegasus” & “I Remember”
  • Tamara Frieson, James Rose Award, 2nd Place: “An Ode to Coils,” “When Seasons Change,” “All Grown Up through a Child's Eye,” “A Love Letter to My Favorite Authors” & “With & Without”
  • Eleanor Bittel, Billie and Curtis Owens Award, 2nd Place: “brick and mortar,” “portrait,” and “banda detachment”
  • Alec Conwell, Gerard Cannon Award, 3rd Place: “Portraits in Hair,” “Out” & “Hibiya Park”
  • Rina Clementine, Gerard Cannon Award, 3rd Place: “New York Hotel Pancakes, Wall Street Pancakes” & “I am American”
  • Gretchen AW Morgan, James Rose Award, Honorable Mention: “Ode to New York,” “Just Peek,” and “Never Get Invited”
  • Faith Bernier, James Rose Award, Honorable Mention: “Electric Girls,” “The Falconer,” “What Can I Offer You?” and “North Star”

2026 Kelly Herbert Writing Award

Presented by Kelly Herbert, Co-founder of the LGBTQA+ Center

Ryan Titre-Barnor, “Becoming Light in Spaces That Tried to Dim Me”

2026 Kelly Herbert Writing Award: Honorary Mention

Adiel Vanegas-Robles, “Learning to See beyond Straight Lines”