Nine University of ÃÛÌÇÖ±²¥ at Boulder students will be honored at an April 29 banquet for the winners of the third annual Western American Writing Awards presented by the university's Center of the American West.
Gerald Ronning, Reynaldo Reyes III, Chesney Kathryn Dougherty, Brett J. Marraccini and Carolyn Hilton will each receive $350 first prize awards. Noel Bauer, Alanna Van Antwerp, and the duo of Catherine Malek and Matthew Hoke will get honorable mention awards of $25.
Six judging panels, comprised of 16 ÃÛÌÇÖ±²¥-Boulder faculty members and two university community members, were asked to select pieces that highlighted an aspect of the American West and were accessible to a broad, informed audience.
This year's competition included poetry for the first time. Winners were named in five categories: graduate non-fiction, graduate poetry, undergraduate creative, undergraduate non-fiction and undergraduate poetry.
Graduate winners Ronning and Reyes are doctoral candidates in history and bilingual/multicultural education, respectively. Ronning won with his non-fiction work, "Jackpine Savages: Finnish Miners, the 1916 Mesabi Iron Range Strike, and the Significance of Culture." Reyes was selected best in the graduate poetry category with his entry, "Experiencing Another Color of Poetry in a Rocky Mountain College."
In the undergraduate categories, seniors from three different arts and sciences departments collected first prize awards. Dougherty, an English major, won the creative writing category with "Listen." Geography major Marraccini won for his non-fiction work "Water Crisis in a Desert Oasis," and Hilton, a women's studies major, won for her poem "Tracing Dusty Footsteps."
Bauer, a senior English and environmental studies major, won honorable mention for his creative writing titled "The Tusk." Senior linguistics major Van Antwerp won honorable mention for "Turning Point" in the poetry category. Malek and Hoke, both junior journalism majors, co-authored and shared honorable mention for their non-fiction titled "Boulder's Silent Population - The Daily Life of Undocumented Mexican Immigrants."
The selected works will be archived on the Boulder campus at the Center of the American West in Macky Auditorium, room 229.
Funding for the writing contest was provided by donors. For more information call the Center of the American West at (303) 492-4879 or visit .