The annual Lacroute Prizes in Poetry and Prose highlight the best student writing from across Linfield University. This year’s contest honors the work of five students, including Sarah Reynolds, the Lacroute Prize in Poetry winner, and Lauren Hodgson, the Lacroute Prize in Prose winner. Reynolds is a senior from Beaverton, majoring in creative writing. She was a finalist in the 2023 Lacroute Prize in Poetry. Hodgson is a senior from Palo Alto, California, majoring in anthropology. Their winning entries, along with the work of all finalists, will be published in the spring issue of Camas: A Journal of Art & Literature. The winners in each category also receive a $500 prize.
Creative writing faculty chose finalists from dozens of submissions, with final winners selected by award-winning poet and Linfield alumnus Shane McCrae ’02. McCrae is the author of several books of poetry, including “In the Language of My Captor,” which won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Poetry and was a finalist for the National Book Award. He is recipient of several other accolades, including a Whiting Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He will give a public reading of his latest publication, “Pulling the Chariot of the Sun: A Memoir of a Kidnapping,” at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 30 in Nicholson Library as part of the MacReads program.
Lacroute Prize in Poetry
Winner: “Fireless” by Sarah Reynolds
McCrae on the winning poem: “The first stanza of ‘Fireless’ stopped me jumping to the end. It’s terrible to read the ending of a poem before you’ve read the middle, but it’s a habit I’ve developed with all but the most engrossing poems. But the first stanza of “Fireless” seemed perfect to me—perfectly structured, perfectly unexpected, and perfectly clear in the way that only true poetry can be perfectly clear: its clarity engendered a feeling of a mystery that cannot ever be finally resolved.”
Runner-up: “Stop Telling Me I’m Dying” by Zee Nace
Finalists:
- “Hic Saltus: Jump Here” by Elana Gatien
- “One-Sided Conversation with an Ambush Predator in Bloom” by Elana Gatien
- “Three-Sixty and Five” by Lauren Hodgson
- “Grapefruit Hand Cream” by Lauren Hodgson
- “Cetacean Stranding” by Lauren Hodgson
- “I Wonder How Many Girls You’ve Killed in Texas” by Zee Nace
- “Earthshine: A Morning Routine” by Zee Nace
- “Joy in the Hadal Zone” by Sarah Reynolds
- “Maze Home” by Sarah Reynolds
Lacroute Prize in Prose
Winner: “Ghost Coins” by Lauren Hodgson
McCrae on the winning story: “‘Ghost Coins’ surprised me. Until the final sentence, I wasn’t sure how it could possibly end in a way that would satisfy—it had seemed off-balance, formally. But when I read the final sentence, every sentence before it seemed to fall into place, and the story, all at once, was balanced.”
Runner-up: “Petrified” by Zee Nace
Finalist: “A Date on the Coast with a Colonizer” by Kayley Dombrigues
The Lacroute Prizes in Poetry and Prose are organized by the Creative Writing Program at Linfield University with generous support from the Lacroute Initiative for Advancing the Liberal Arts.
