McKayla Conahan Wins SC Academy of Authors’ Student Prize

Congratulations to Creative Writing minor McKayla Conahan, who won this year’s South Carolina Academy of Authors’ student prize. She is awarded $1000 and is invited to attend a brunch for Fellows and the SCAA Induction Ceremony and Reception in April, at which four prominent South Carolina authors will be welcomed into the Academy: Dorothy Allison, Orville Vernon Burton, Betsy Byars and (posthumously) Guy Davenport.

The judge of this year’s contest praises McKayla’s poetry:

“These poems take head-on the dizzying dilemma of human existence in an often inhospitable world. Yet their lyric nuance, wild imagination and sonic heft carve a place not only for the plaintive speaker, but for yearning of every stripe. This poet sees keenly into the heart of things, turns away from nothing, and possesses an arsenal of language that lifts off the page. These are memorably courageous poems.”