Awards
The Southern Appalachian Student Conference on Literature offers awards for achievement in essay
2023 Award Information
Those who wish to submit their completed essays for consideration of our “Achievement in Essay” award should send completed essays of approximately 6-8 double-spaced pages in length by the abstract submission date—March 3, 2023—to the conference organizers.
We wish to follow a blind submission policy. Student name, essay category (undergraduate or graduate), contact information, and essay title should be on the cover sheet. The essay’s title should also be on the first page of the essay, but the student name should not appear anywhere but the cover sheet.
There will be prizes for the best undergraduate and graduate student submission. Winners will receive a certificate and a cash prize (last year’s prize: $250), as well as recognition on the conference website.
Previous Award Recipients
2020 (Essay Judge: Dr. Judy Slagle)
Undergraduate Winner: Kristin Lyons (ETSU), “Defining the Appalachian Man: Gender in Melissa Range’s Scriptorium”
Graduate Winner: Zoe Hester (ETSU), “To Damn or not to Dam: The Preservation and Desecration of Paradise in Rose McLarney’s ‘Imminent Domain'"
Undergraduate Honorable Mention: Tanner Linkous (ETSU), "“Postmodern Penance for a Modern Albatross."
Graduate Honorable Mention: Rebecca Curry (MTSU), “The Intertextual Relationship Between Macbeth and The Godfather”
2019 (Essay Judges: Dr. Chelsea Wessells and Dr. Matthew Holtmeier)
Undergraduate Winner: Emily Price (ETSU), "Bob Kaufman: The Original Beatnik"
Graduate Winner: Scottie Garber (ETSU), "The Unsentimental Sentimentalist: A Look at the Parodies of Phoebe Cary"
2018 (Essay Judge: Dr. D. Michael Jones)
Undergraduate Winner: Amber Rookstool (ETSU), "Using Conceptual Metaphor Theory to Analyze the Objection of Seventeenth Century French Society in Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy's The White Cat"
Graduate Winner: Ian T. Hall (University of Tennessee-Knoxville), "Good Natured, But Good for Nothing: Rip Van Winkle, Sut Lovingood, and the Stereotypes of the Amiable Appalachian Shirker and the Stifled Hillbilly Shyster"
Undergraduate Honorable Mention: Jessica Dunker (ETSU), "Sexuality in Appalachia: An Insight into Jeff Mann's Heritage and Homosexuality"
Graduate Honorable Mention: Tucker Foster (ETSU), "Postmodern Tendencies in Eighteenth Century Literature: Examining The Beggar's Opera, Tristram Shandy, and Their Adaptations"
2017 (Essay Judge: Dr. Isabel Gomez Sobrino)
Undergraduate: Adam Swift, "Different Directions, Distinctly American: Innovations of Robert Frost & e.e. cummings"
Graduate: Alexandria Craft (ETSU), "A Sense of Seeking within Poetry: The References and Recreations of God in Geoffrey Hill, R. S. Thomas, and Ted Hughes"
2016 (Essay Judge: Dr. Matthew Fehskens)
Undergraduate: Laura Traister (ETSU), "Bharati Mukherjee's Jasmine as Translator and Translated Being"
Graduate: Kelsey A. Solomon (ETSU), "Empathy and the Postmodern British Novel: Validating Kaleidoscopic History in Penelope Lively's Moon Tiger"
2015 (Essay Judge: Dr. Scott Honeycutt)
Undergraduate: Danielle Byington, "Zoomorphic Birth and Fallen Troy's Inability to Be Reborn."
Graduate: Jessica Hall, "Visions and Waking Dreams: Keats's Ambivalent Assessment of the Visionary Imagination."
2010 (Essay Judge: Dr. Daniel Westover)
1st Prize, Jennifer Daniel (ETSU), "Hester's Half of the Sky: Chinese Support of Nina Baym's Scarlet Conclusions"
2nd Prize, Mark Michaelson (Georgia State University), "The Redemptive Function of Allegory in The House of the Seven Gables"
3rd Prize, Kim Steger (ETSU), "The Role of Disguise in Shakespeare's Plays"
2009 (Essay Judge: Dr. Karen Kornweibel)
First Award, Jesse Graves (UT-Knoxville), “Lattice Work: Formal Tendencies in the Poetry of Robert Morgan and Ron Rash." Dr. Jesse Graves is now Associate Professor and Poet-in-Residence at ETSU (coincidence?)
Second Award, Jessica Gilley (ETSU), “’From last year, and from the year before last, and from the year before that again’: History and Culture in Beckett."
Third Award, Robert Kottage (ETSU), "Reading the 'Four of Cups': Divination versus Christianity in McCarthy's Blood Meridian."