Student Printer, Poet, and Blogger Bags Major Prize
Posted on May 19, 2008
Filed Under Media, Words, words, words | By Ari Finkelstein
22-year-old Emma Sovich had a surprise coming to her at yesterday’s Washington College commencement. In addition to receiving her diploma, the English major was awarded the Sophie Kerr Prize, one of the largest literary prizes in the country available to undergraduates with a cash prize of $67,481. According to an article in today’s Washington Post, Sovich won for her “portfolio of poetry, blog entries, and essays that examined family, travel and escape.” You can check out the stuff student-writing awards are made of on her blog “The Composing Stick”.
As is quickly apparent, this is not your average blog. In place of snarky rants or public confessions of heartbreak (thank you, LiveJournal), Ms. Sovich writes literary vignettes that are part history and part personal narrative. Most of the entries revolve around an old-fashioned “Print Shop,” where the author ponders such things as whether Camelot, “which is very leggy and curvy,” is an appropriate font for her new poem, or how much paper she should buy in order to print and bind the noir book she and her colleague are preparing. As Ms. Sovich puts it, “This blog is a record of my experiences as well as a medium for the expression of my curiosity about archaic technologies that metamorphose into art.”
With the Sophie Kerr Prize in hand, Ms. Sovich should feel a lot more comfortable about pursuing her anachronistic, but fascinating, source of inspiration. And hey–that’s $67,481 worth of student loans this aspiring writer can cross off her list…at least until the book deal comes through.
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