Roxana Rivera Memorial Poetry Contest Winners

Announcing the Winners of the 2008 Roxana Rivera Memorial Poetry Contest
Sponsored by the Creative Writing Program and the Women’s Studies Program
Southern Illinois University Carbondale

Judge Sandy Longhorn, poet and English instructor at Pulaski Technical College, Little Rock, Arkansas, has chosen to honor the following poets and their poems:

Undergraduate Winners:
First place: Krishna Pattisapu, for "Strippers."
Second place: Hope Connell, for "The Shelf Life of Fruit."
Third place: Kate Gramlich, for "Drop."
Honorable Mention: Doug Dowling, for "In Her Mother's Bootsteps."

Graduate Winners:
First place: Travis Mossotti, for "I watched her going into a gas station,"
Second place: Amie Whittemore, for "The Secret History."
Third place: Rachel Furey, for "It Takes a Woman."
Honorable Mention: Jason Lee Brown, for "Advice for the New You."


Please join us on Thursday, March 27, 2008 at 4 pm in the SIUC Student Center Auditorium for an awards ceremony featuring a reading from our judge, Sandy Longhorn, the author of Blood Almanac (Anhinga Press) and a recent recipient of an Individual Artist Fellowship in Poetry from the Arkansas Arts Council.

The winners will also read their award-winning poems. There will be a booksigning and reception in the Old Main Lounge after the ceremony.

The Roxana Rivera Memorial Poetry Contest honors the memory of Roxana Rivera, who was a poet and graduate student in English at the time of her death in 2003. Additional support for this contest comes from the Judge William Holmes Cook Endowment.

Visit Sandy Longhorn's blog:
Sandy Longhorn