www.catherinepierce.net

 

I’ll always remember learning that I had won the Wick Chapbook Competition. I had returned late at night to my Columbus apartment. As I walked in, my roommate told me that Maggie Anderson had called for me. For a split second, I was elated (would she call with bad news?), then instantly crushed as I realized it was way too late to call her back, and there was no way I could find out for sure why she’d called until the morning. Thankfully, she had also sent me an email letting me know that my manuscript, Animals of Habit, had been selected as one of that year’s winners, so my roommate and I had just cause to celebrate all night.

 

Every bit of the process was fantastic. Maggie worked with me to help edit the poems, and they are much, much stronger for her thoughtful and discerning input. Once the chapbook came out, I had the opportunity to read at Kent State, and to meet with a lot of people—students, professors, staff, members of the community—who really cared about poetry, and whose lives had been enriched by their involvement with the Wick program. And now, years later, I still feel connected to all of the poets and readers whose lives have been impacted by this fantastic program. When I found out I had won the Wick, I was in my third year in Ohio State’s M.F.A. program, about to graduate, and unsure of what the future would hold once June rolled around. I will always be grateful to the Wick program for the encouragement, the guidance, the opportunities, and the community of writers that came along with winning the competition.

 

Now, after graduating from OSU and earning my Ph.D. from the University of Missouri, I’m an assistant professor of English and creative writing at Mississippi State University. My first full-length book of poems, Famous Last Words, won the Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize and was published in 2008.

 

photo credit: Nick Antony