Great Lakes Colleges Association, Strengthening Education in the Tradition of the Liberal Arts
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January 13, 2020

The Great Lakes Colleges Association is pleased to announce
the winners of the 2020 GLCA New Writers Award for Poetry, Fiction, and Creative Non-fiction. Now in its 51st year, the New Writers Award confers recognition on promising writers who have published a first volume in one of the three genres.  Judges of the New Writers Award are faculty members of creative writing and literature at GLCA’s member colleges.  Winning writers receive invitations to visit GLCA member colleges – where they give readings, meet with students and faculty members, and discuss technique and creativity in the
writing process. 

The 2020 winner for Poetry is Aaron Coleman, Threat Come Close,
published by Four Way Books.  Our GLCA judges note:

Aaron Coleman’s historical
imagination excavates racial history in this country, not veering from what is discovered, but inviting it, even dwelling in it personally.  The poems explore the lyric interstices of black experience in the U.S. and youth and coming of age – including a growing consciousness of sexuality and desire.  The book’s apt title, Threat Come Close, can be read as a statement of fact and also a provocation.  The poems learn by looking and loving outward, and there is much to learn by looking through the eyes of these poems.  There is superb lyricism and a fine balance between an unabashed celebration of words and a near-plain style voice of witness.  “I am made of what I am afraid to remember,”
he writes in the prologue poem, locating himself simultaneously in a cultural history inclusive of – yet never collapsed into – his own personal history.

Judges of the Poetry entries were:

Christopher Bakken, Allegheny College

Chanda Feldman, Oberlin College

Janet McAdams, Kenyon College

The 2020 winner for Fiction is Eric Schlich, Quantum Convention, published by University of
North Texas Press.  Our GLCA judges note:

Always humorous and wildly inventive, this collection is remarkable for the variety of characters and situations it portrays. In the title story, Schlich captures suburban malaise and our secret selves as the main character goes to a convention where every
possible alt self exists – and every possible alternative wife! The range of protagonists that Schlich convincingly portrays – a religious young girl, a neurotic adult loner, the actress who played the Wicked Witch of the West, and more – demonstrate impressive skill.  Movement between realist and speculative modes combined with imaginative and varied story structures make the stories compelling, both individually and as a whole.  These are very teachable stories that exemplify different facets of literary imagination and craft.  They make a reader see and feel in new ways even when dealing with old themes. 

 Judges of the Fiction Award were: 

Peter Grandbois, Denison University

Mary Lacey, Earlham College

Christiana Salah, Hope College

The 2020 winner for Creative Non-fiction is Sarah Viren, MINE: Essays, Published by University of New Mexico Press.  Our judges note:

Deeply inquisitive and probing, generous and judicious, Sarah Viren’s Mine is a series of meditations, memories buoyed to the surface by love and loss and wonder. She transforms and illuminates the world as she mines it, whether it be
accepting a murderer’s futon, becoming “unmarried” to her partner after crossing state lines, or singing the ballad, “Tom Dooley,” to her daughter.  She examines her world precisely and with startling self-awareness, threading her own experiences to conversations on contemporary culture, community, politics, and the arts.  Viren’s essays are extremely well-crafted, and her prose beautiful.  The voice is mature, full of wisdom and insight. A brilliantly rendered account of what it means to be of a place, Viren’s collection also answers what it means to be of the world and what it means, ultimately, to be here today. A ruminative, absorbing book.

Judges of the 2020 award in Creative Non-fiction were:

Amy Butcher, Ohio Wesleyan
University

Peter Graham, DePauw University

Bruce Mills, Kalamazoo College

For more information on the New Writers Award, please
contact Gregory Wegner, Director of Program Development ([email protected]), or Colleen Monahan Smith, Executive
Assistant to the President ([email protected])
at the GLCA.

Additional information is available on the GLCA web site: GLCA New Writers Award

Details for the  2021 Students of Color Leadership Conference (SOCLC) will be forthcoming over the next couple of months.  The announcement will include whether it is in-person or virtual, the date, and registration details.  Please note that this opportunity is open to GLCA institutions only.

 

Liberal arts colleges observe two kinds of ceremonial events.  One of these – commencement – centers on students as new matriculants or graduates, commending their hopes and achievements as they embark on a next phase of life.  The other – inauguration – involves similar academic regalia and ritual, but its subject centers more on the college itself – its founding, notable achievements, leaders, and events that have brought it through the decades to the present moment, when it celebrates the installation of a new president to lead the institution into the future. 

A recent presidential inauguration of Dr. Hilary Link at Allegheny College exemplified the ritual in grand style.  These are events in which the extended community of the college assembles; all of those who participate can see and feel themselves to be part of something larger than themselves.  There is emotional power as the procession advances across campus to the inaugural gathering place:  faculty and staff, students, alumni, trustees, members of the community, and beyond.  Delegates from other academic institutions signify that this is a celebration not just of one college, but of liberal arts education in the U.S. and abroad, with all the values and aspirations it affirms. 

Beyond these elements, the speeches of welcome to a new president collectively tell the story of a college.  There are recountings of its humble beginnings in the nineteenth century as an institution of learning founded at the edge of the frontier by leaders of a protestant denomination for the purpose of training clergy. The details include the number of students first enrolled (less than two dozen) and of faculty (two or three), the initial cost of tuition (less than $50), and increments of growth through time.  Sometimes there is particular notice of an extraordinary president who served for two decades or more, as well as transformational moments, including the decision to admit women to the student body.

Events of this kind in any era express hopes for the continued vitality of a college, while also acknowledging forces that could prove challenging in the time ahead.  Our liberal arts colleges face heightened challenges today, ranging from financial and enrollment concerns, to growing questions about the value and utility of a liberal arts education. 

This balance of affirmation and apprehension was evident from the speeches given at the Allegheny inauguration.  Three of the key speakers addressed the relevance and importance of a liberal arts education in the current age. 

Some paraphrases of such statements affirming the liberal arts included these:

  • Independent liberal arts colleges are a small segment of higher education in the U.S., but the small campus residential experience prepares students especially well in fostering respect and celebration of differences.  Inside and outside of class, our colleges prepare students to reflect seriously on the possibilities of democracy, including the development of empathy for others.
  • Puzzles can be solved by assembling pieces that are all readily at hand, but to solve a mystery requires a deeper process, entering a world of possibilities not yet foreseen and drawing on other realms of knowledge.  We may think we know what we are preparing for, but the study of liberal arts helps prepare us for futures we haven’t imagined. 
  • Immersion in the study of languages was a window into other ways of seeing and thinking.  It was a way of shifting the angle of the lens and seeing familiar things from an altered perspective.  The experience of otherness – whether though the study of language, study abroad, or other means of experiencing different cultures – is a key element of learning and development. 
  • Liberal arts education can teach students the humility and openness to see things from other standpoints, to pursue avenues that offer different ways of understanding, and to embrace rather than reject otherness. 

These paraphrases cannot express the richness of the speakers’ statements in the context of their full remarks.  Collectively, however, the thinking delivered at this inauguration offered compelling narratives of the power of liberal arts education to shape and transform a life beyond what one might have imagined.

An inauguration demonstrates that the ability to tell stories of the impact of the liberal arts on individual lives is one of the most effective strengths our colleges possess.  Individual story-telling of this kind is an advantage that could be applied to even greater effect in making the case for the liberal arts beyond our own academic communities.

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This year three new presidents have been appointed  by member colleges of  the GLCA – Matt Scogin at Hope College, who was inaugurated on September 13, 2019; Hilary Link at Allegheny College, who was inaugurated on October 18, 2019; and Anne Houtman at Earlham College, whose inauguration is yet to be scheduled. 

By Gregory Wegner

Photo by Bill Owen

GLCA staff joined administrators from four of its member colleges in a visit to Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan on November 8, 2019.  The University was founded in 1882 and today enrolls nearly 50,000 undergraduate and graduate students.  Its mission is to educate students to make positive contributions to a changing world and contribute to the public good as global leaders. 

Among Waseda’s educational priorities is to promote global competence in students through opportunities to interact with people of other nations and cultures.  One way it does this is through a partnership with Earlham College called the Japan Study Program, which is one of the GLCA’s Recognized Study-Away programs. 

A GLCA gathering in the office of the Japan Study program at Waseda: From left: John Woell, Albion College; Simon Gray, GLCA; Mickey McDonald, GLCA; Anne Houtman, Earlham College; Michiyo Nagayama, Waseda University, Jorge Gonzalez, Kalamazoo College, Dyron Dabney, Earlham College; and Sam Pack, Kenyon College (Japan Study Faculty Director 2019-20).

Up to 35 students of GLCA or ACM colleges per year enroll in the Japan Study Program at Waseda to enhance their liberal arts studies with a deep experience of international culture.  American students take courses taught in English in addition to at least six units per semester of Japanese language study.  Students benefit also from the experience of a major university in the vibrant metropolitan setting of Tokyo. 

The recent American visitors to Waseda University included Mickey McDonald, President of the GLCA; Anne Houtman, President of Earlham College; Jorge Gonzalez, President of Kalamazoo College, and John Woell, Associate Provost at Albion College.  They were guided by Dyron Dabney, Director of the Japan Study Program at Earlham College. 

The visit culminated in a lunch with the President and senior officials of Waseda University, in which there were exchanges of gifts and expressions of good will for the strong partnership that exists between these institutions. 

GLCA President, Mickey McDonald (left), presents gifts to Aiji Tanaka (standing, center), President of Waseda University, and to Masahiko Gemma (right), Waseda’s Vice President for International Affairs.

The Earlham/GLCA/Waseda Japan Study Program now celebrates 56 years since its founding.  For information about the Japan Study Program, contact Dyron Dabney at [email protected].


Marcelo Hernandez Castillo and faculty members at Kalamazoo College.  From left: Oliver Baez Bendorf, Shanna Salinas, Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, and Francisco Villegas

The season’s first campus visit of the GLCA New Writers Award (NWA) took place Monday, October 28, at Kalamazoo College.  Marcelo Hernandez Castillo is the 2019-20 winner of the NWA poetry award for his collection entitled, Cenzontle (BOA Editions, 2018).  

Castillo is a poet, essayist, translator, and immigration advocate.  He was born in Zacatecas, Mexico and immigrated at the age of five with his family to the California central valley. As an AB540 student, he earned his B.A. from Sacramento State University and was the first undocumented student to graduate from the Helen Zell Writers Program at the University of Michigan. His immigration case was used by the Supreme Court to justify the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) under president Obama.

His visit to Kalamazoo encompassed a series of events with students who were interested in his life as well as his writings.  In the morning he visited a sociology class on “Race and Racism,” taught by Dr. Francisco Villegas.  At lunch he met with creative writing students and faculty.  In mid-afternoon he met with an English class on “Reading the World: Identities,” taught by Dr. Shanna Salinas.  In the evening he presented a public reading and book signing at the College’s Intercultural Center. 

Kalamazoo College had structured Castillo’s visit to recognize and celebrate his achievement not just as a writer, but as one who has experienced the life of an undocumented immigrant.  His poems and comments expressed what the GLCA poetry judges called, “a story of undocumented immigrants, border crossing, transgression, and the tantalizing fictions and facts of the American dream.”  During the reading Castillo described his determination in writing to “take back the joy in life” from the state of uncertainty that has often characterized his experience.   

Over 40 people attended Marcello Castillo’s reading and book-signing at Kalamazoo College.  He has scheduled readings at several other GLCA member colleges in the winter and spring terms. 

The New Writers Award, now in its 49th year, provides students of GLCA’s member colleges with the opportunity to meet and engage with writers of promise who have won distinction in a first-published volume of fiction, poetry, or creative non-fiction.  Judges of this national contest are faculty members of our GLCA member colleges in the fields of creative writing and literature.  

The 2019 winner for Creative Non-fiction is Dawn Davies, Mothers of Sparta: A Memoir in Pieces, published by Flatiron Books.  Judges in Creative Non-fiction were:  Matthew Ferrence (Allegheny), Marin Heinritz (Kalamazoo), Rhoda Janzen (Hope).  Our GLCA judges note:

Dawn Davies’ Mothers of Sparta deftly weaves her experiences as a woman with a simplicity of language, an elegant structure and a depth of emotion in these often redemptive essays. "Mothers of Sparta," among the book’s most powerful pieces of writing, explores parenting with compassion and responsibility, making a significant contribution to our cultural conversation about disability. These essays examine our modern ways of being and becoming.

The 2019 winner for Poetry is Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, Cenzontle, published by BOA Editions, Ltd.  Judges in poetry were:  David Baker (Denison), Joe Heithaus (DePauw), and Lynn Powell (Oberlin).  Our GLCA judges note:

Castillo’s narrative itself couldn’t be more timely and significant:  it’s a story of undocumented immigrants, border crossing, transgression, and the tantalizing fictions and facts of the American dream.  To read these poems is to participate in a journey – and an unexpected one towards illumination and the complexities of longing and belonging.  Castillo’s sweep is large but his voice is particular and clarified.  This is mature, engaged poetry.

The 2019 winner for Fiction is Lesley Nneka Arimah, What it Means When a Man Falls From the Sky, published by Riverhead Books.  Judges in Fiction were:  Danit Brown (Albion), Eric Freeze (Wabash), and Jennifer Hayward (Wooster).  Our GLCA judges note:

Lesley Nneka Arimah's larger themes explore generational conflict, transnational migrations, and the unexpected ways that the past can reach forward to throw the present off course. Her voice is always assured, the writing often beautiful and occasionally breathtaking. These characters have stories they want to tell – about family, especially mothers and daughters; about love and its dangers; about the struggle of women to be heard against the social chorus of gendered expectations.

Each of these writers has received invitations to visit several GLCA members colleges to give readings and meet with students and faculty in the fall or spring of this year.  Check the Events page of this web site to see where these writers will be.  For a fuller account of the writers and their achievements, see the GLCA New Writers Award Newsletter.  For questions about the visits of NWA winners, contact Colleen Monahan Smith of the GLCA: [email protected].