Recognition, Prize Money and More for Area Writers

Susan Ludvigson

Jennifer Hubbard

Susan Ludvigson, professor emerita at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, is this year's winner of the prestigious James Dickey Award from Five Points magazine in Atlanta. Her winning poems,"Divigations," "Mythologies" and "Sharing the Territory," will be published in the fall issue of Five Points and are included in her new manuscript, as yet untitled. The award carries a $1,000 prize. Ludvigson has nine poetry collections from Louisiana State University Press and has received many honors over the years, including Guggenheim and Fulbright fellowships, as well as fellowships from the NEA and the North Carolina Arts Council. She is the widow of fiction writer Scott Ely, who also taught for many years at Winthrop.

Kathryn Schwille's short-short story, "FM104," which appeared in Issue 20 of the literary journal Memorious, has won a spot on the 2014 Wigleaf Top Very Short Fiction List (under 1,000 words), selected from about 200 nominations of stories that appeared online last year. The judge says Schwille's story "...speaks in a hybrid language of beautiful lunacy and keen prophecy." Schwille's fiction has appeared previously in such literary  journals as Crazyhorse, West Branch and Sycamore Review. She is a recipient of a 2014 North Carolina Arts Council Fellowship. "FM04" is the opening to her manuscript of short stories, "24 Seconds," set against the backdrop the Columbia shuttle disaster in East Texas. Schwille lives in Charlotte and earned her MFA at Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa.

The young adult novel, "And We Stay" (Random House), by former Charlotte Country Day English teacher Jennifer Hubbard, now of Salisbury, is on the summer reading list for students at Woodberry Forest boarding school in Madison County, Va. Also on the list -- students can select three and no fair listening to audio books -- John Green's "The Fault in Our Stars," Nick Hornby's "Slam," and Pat Conroy's "My Losing Season." Hubbard's novel, set on the campus of a girls' Massachusetts boarding school, is "quite a page-turner," says the blurb. "Part mystery, part bildungsroman, this intelligent novel brings us into contact with a complex, conflicted heroine who doesn't care much about following the rules." Hubbard is a former English teacher at Woodberry Forest and is 100 pages into her third novel for young adults, modeled on five girls she taught at Country Day.
 

Queens Prof Named Pulitzer Finalist

"Stunned and delighted." That was Morri Creech's reaction late Monday afternoon when his daughter called him while he was teaching to congratulate him on being named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his poetry collection, "The Sleep of Reason" (Waywise Press, 2013).

Morri Creech

"My phone just blew up with calls," Creech says by email, "but I had no idea what the whole thing was about. It seemed unreal, especially since I publish with such a small press and didn't have any warning that this might happen."

Creech is writer-in-residence at Queens University of Charlotte, where he teaches in both the undergraduate creative writing program and in the low-residency MFA program. Susan Ludvigson, prize-winning poet and Winthrop University professor emeritus, got to know Creech when he took her classes and workshops at Winthrop.

"He came to my classes as a freshman," says Ludvigson, "already knowing his calling, and having read most of the important poets in the English language, as well as the French and German poets. If he hadn't taken classes, I'm sure he would have arrived at his success on his own, because he's both brilliant and fiercely dedicated." At the same time, says Ludvigson, he was "quiet and humble in the workshops, offering helpful criticism to other poets, while believing that he still had much to learn."

Charlotte poet Beth Swann met Creech when she enrolled in the Queens MFA program in 2009. "Knowledgeable, affable, accessible and professional at all times, Morri remains to this day my trusted mentor," she says. "He's not only an asset to Queens, Morri is a man who impacts and empowers students and makes valuable contributions to our community."

Swann calls Creech's poetry "breathtaking," blending, she says, "a keen observation of life today with the music of the masters to create timeless beauty."

Creech, 43, was born in Moncks Corner, S.C., and studied at both Winthrop and McNeese State University in Louisiana. He's been awarded a Ruth Lilly Fellowship, and he's received grants in poetry from the NEA and the North Carolina and Louisiana Arts councils. He lives in Charlotte with his wife and two children.

The winner of the 2014 Pulitzer in poetry is Vijay Seshdri for "3 Sections" (Graywolf). The other finalist is Adrian Matejka for "The Big Smoke" (Penguin).