We are delighted to announce the winners of the 2020 Meringoff Writing Awards! The awards include a prize of $3,500 each and publication in Literary Matters. The Meringoff Writing Awards are given annually in the categories of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction.
1) Non-Fiction: Oliver Spivey for “’The Secret Rhythm of Chance’: The Nabokovian Vision of Tragedy in Pale Fire”
Oliver Spivey earned his BA in English from the University of North Carolina at Pembroke (2011) and his MA from North Carolina State University (2013). Spivey is currently a PhD candidate in literature at Oklahoma State University. His interests include tragedy and the tragic vision in American fiction, the works of Melville and Hawthorne, British literature, traditional humanistic criticism, close reading and aesthetics, and classic cinema. Spivey is the recipient of several awards and scholarships, including The Jeffrey Walker Early American Studies Scholarship (OSU), the 2011 North Carolina College Media Association Award for poetry (third place), and the Grace Loving Gibson Endowed Scholarship for Excellence in English (UNCP). His critical writings have appeared in such outlets as Areo Magazine, VoegelinView, and The University Bookman. He lives with his wife, Jessica, and son, Nathaniel, in Stillwater, Oklahoma.
2) Fiction: Anca Nemoianu for “Truffles and Grapes”
Anca Nemoianu has taught linguistics for a long time at the Catholic University of America, and, occasionally, an introductory literature class. Lately, she has started writing stories about imagined people in very real lands. Her story “Justice by Night” won the 9th Annual F. Scott Fitzgerald short story contest. Her volume Children of Light, 2018, is a collection of semi-memorialistic narratives about children, for older readers who might be able to see the light emanating from the dark settings of the stories.
3) Poetry: Brian Brodeur for ‘Corn Poppets,’ ‘Barcode Ode,’ and ‘Space Junk.’
Brian Brodeur is the author most recently of Every Hour Is Late (Measure Press, 2019). New poems and essays appear in Hopkins Review, Gettysburg Review, Southern Review, and The Writer’s Chronicle. Founder and Coordinator of the digital interview archive “How a Poem Happens,” Brian lives with his wife and daughter in the Whitewater River Valley. He teaches creative writing and American literature at Indiana University East.