English PhD Matthew Nye wins Emerging Writer's Residency and Book Prize

Congratulations to Matthew Nye, a PhD student in English who was selected as the sixth winner of the Madeleine P. Plonsker Emerging Writer’s Residency and Book Prize:

[Nye] will be in residence on the campus of Lake Forest College from February 1 to March 31, 2014, where he will work to complete his winning manuscript, Pike and Bloom.

He will receive $10,000 and, upon editorial approval, the finished book will be published by the &NOW Books imprint of Lake Forest College Press, with distribution by Northwestern University Press. He also will take part in the Lake Forest Literary Festival and offer a series of public presentations.

...

About Pike and Bloom, Professor Tissut writes: “The intricacies of Matthew Nye’s sentence patterns, fraught with embedded motifs that bring the character’s intense inward life to the fore, trap the reader and take her on an exploration of the surprises and hesitancies of language. How else are we to go out into the world, physically or mentally, than by riding this collective, infinitely malleable medium, put to extremely individual uses by each of us? From the—illusory?—ablation of his appendix to his recurring encounters with a nurse associated with Marlene Dietrich, Pike weaves his own verbal universe by dint of pondering, questioning, and surmising.

Terrific news for Nye and congratulations to this mentors and professors in the English department. Another truly Amazing Student in the Franklin College.