Joe Wilkins, associate professor of English at Linfield College, has won the Great Lakes Colleges Association’s 2014 New Writers award for creative non-fiction.
Wilkins, who joined the Linfield faculty last fall, won the GLCA’s award for his memoir “The Mountain and the Fathers: Growing up on the Big Dry,” which was released in 2012. The book was also a 2012 Montana Book Award Honor Book and a finalist for the 2013 Orion Book club.
Now in its 45th year, the GLCA’s New Writers Award presents recognition to promising writers who have published a first volume. Winning writers receive invitations to visit GLCA member colleges, where they give readings and discuss writing with students and faculty members.
Wilkins, who teaches creative writing at Linfield, also recently earned one of nine High Plains Book Awards for his book of poetry, “Notes from the Journey Westward.” Additionally, he co-edited with Sean Prentiss the anthology “The Far Edges of the Fourth Genre” that examines the writing style and boundaries of the creative nonfiction genre. The book has just been released from Michigan State University Press.
Wilkins’ poems, essays and stories have also appeared in The Georgia Review, The Southern Review, Utne Reader, Ecotone, The Sun, Orion and Slate, among other magazines and literary journals. He has also been a National Magazine Award finalist and PEN Center USA Award finalist. He holds a master’s in creative writing from the University of Idaho, and a bachelor’s in engineering from Gonzaga University.
