Lawrence University Prizes in English
Five prizes in English are awarded each year at Lawrence University for original student compositions. These are:
The Hicks Prize in Fiction, for the best short story.
The Hicks Prize in Poetry, for the best poem.
The Alexander Reid Prize, for the best work of creative non-fiction
The Wood Prize, for the best essay written by a freshman for an English course in the fall or winter terms of this academic year. (This prize does not include essays from Freshman Studies)
The Tichenor Prize, for the best critical essay written by any student in courses in the English department.
The Hicks and Reid Prizes are open to all students at Lawrence University; the submissions for these prizes do not have to be written for a course at Lawrence. The Tichenor Prize and Wood Prize are for papers written for English courses at Lawrence. There is no requirement that the submissions for the Tichenor Prize come from this academic year; however, the submissions for the Wood Prize should come from this year. Students should not submit any work that they have submitted in past years. The submissions may be of any length.
There is a limit of one submission per category for each student except in the category of poetry; if students are submitting poems for the Hicks Prize in Poetry, they should submit a minimum of three poems and a maximum of five poems, and they should staple the poems together.
The following rules govern the competition:
- Since judging will be done by members of the Lawrence English department, to preserve anonymity please write your name, the name of the prize for which your entry is competing, and the title of the work on a separate page attached to each entry. (One sheet of paper with this information can accompany the poems that are stapled together.)
- All manuscripts must be submitted in clean, black-and-white, typed copy.
- If a single piece is submitted for more than one prize, a properly marked copy must be supplied for each competition.
- Submissions should be given to the staff in the Main Hall faculty office.
The deadline for all contests is typically midway through week one of Term III. Please contact the chair of the English Department for the exact date.