Prizes Each spring, the English Department awards prizes in both creative writing and critical fields.

English Department Creative Writing Prizes

• Academy of American Poets Prize:
• • The Academy of American Poets Prize is offered for the best poem or group of poems submitted to the English/Creative Writing Department.
• Jacobson-Laing Award in Poetry:
• • The Alexander Laing Memorial Writing Award will be given to an undergraduate for the "best manuscript of original poems."
• Lockwood Prize:
• • Competition for the Lockwood Prize is open to undergraduates classified as Junior. Any form of writing except plays may be submitted. No contestant may submit more than three manuscripts, but a group of short poems may be considered as one manuscript.
• Grimes Prize:
• • Competition for the Grimes Prize is open to undergraduates classified as Senior. Any form of writing except plays may be submitted. No contestant may submit more than three manuscripts, but a group of short poems may be considered as one manuscript.
• The Sidney Cox Memorial Prize:
• • The Sidney Cox Memorial Prize is offered annually for "that piece of undergraduate writing which most nearly meets those high standards of originality and integrity which Sidney Cox set for himself and for his students in his teaching and in his book, "Indirections for Those Who Want to Write."
• The William C. Spengemann Award in Writing:
• • The William C. Spengemann Award in Writing is given for a work of prose or poetry distinguished by its formal precision, as well as its original, innovative, or iconoclastic approach to its subject matter.
• The Erskine Caldwell Prize:
• • The Erskine Caldwell prize is awarded to students whose written work in the short story is most outstanding.        

The deadline for submissions is Friday, May 1, 2009 at noon.

Only one copy of your manuscript is necessary.  Please indicate on a cover sheet the prizes for which you would like your work considered.

Please turn your submission in ON TIME to the Administrative Assistant, 201 Sanborn House. The prizes are decided by an outside judge.

The Awards Ceremony (and reading by both the winners and this year’s judge) is scheduled for Thursday, May 14, 2009, at 4:00 p.m. in the Sanborn Library, Sanborn House. The Awards Dinner will be at 6:30 p.m., following the ceremony. Any Dartmouth undergraduates may submit a manuscript.

English Department Critical Prizes

These prizes are by faculty nomination, voted on by the entire faculty at the end of the academic year.

• The Hochman Prize
• • This prize is awarded yearly to a graduating senior who majored in English and who demonstrated by his or her course work both academic excellence and particular dedication to the field of American literature.
• The Feinstein Prize
• • This prize is awarded to the student in the English Honors Program whose honors thesis and overall work demonstrate the most effective exploration of feelings through language.
• The Perkins Prize
• • This prize is awarded to that undergraduate Dartmouth student who shall show the most promise in Greek, or in Latin, or in English literature.