AWP/Prague Summer Program

Congratulations to the 2003 AWP/Prague Summer Program’s Fiction, Poetry, and Creative Nonfiction Winners. The winners were selected from 436 entries (187 in fiction, 197 in Poetry, and 52 in Creative Nonfiction). The Summer Program Fellowships include support for tuition and accommodations (which normally cost $2,795). The winners were selected by the AWP Board of Directors.

Poetry Winner
John O’Connor
John O’Connor’s poetry has appeared in DoubleTake, Columbia, Sycamore Review, Poet Lore, MARGIE, and others. He was a finalist in this year’s Nation/ Discovery contest. Also a performing songwriter and folksinger, he has recorded on the Flying Fish, Collector, and Chroma labels. He works as a union organizer for the New York State Nurses Association in New York City.

Fiction Winner
Scott Kaukonen
Scott Kaukonen is presently a student in the PhD program in creative writing at the University of Missouri-Columbia. He has an undergraduate degree for Hope College and an MFA from the University of Arizona. He is finishing a collection of short stories and is at work on a novel.

NonFiction Winner
Angela Balcita
Angela M. Balcita is currently completing her MFA in Nonfiction Writing at the University of Iowa. Her work has appeared in the Florida Review. She hails from Greensburg, Pennsylvania.

Guidelines for the 2003 AWP/ Western Michigan University Prague Summer Program

The city of Prague is, as Franz Kafka has written, a "little mother that has claws." Today, Prague is considered a hub of European literary culture, considering the vast numbers of West European and North American expatriates and visitors. Prague has called itself home or inspiration to such writers as Kafka, Goethe, Rilke, Milan Kundera, Vaclav Havel, Josef Skvorecky, and Ivan Klíma. English literature has a permanent place in Prague's culture, with a large number of bookstores, cafés, and newspapers catering to an ever-increasing English constituency.

The Prague Summer Program convenes every July. Teachers such as Andrei Codrescu, Patricia Hampl, Brad Leithauser, Mary Jo Salter, William Gass, Miroslav Holub, Carolyn Kizer, Gerald Stern, Arnost Lustig, Amy Tan, Al Young, Ivan Klíma, Grace Paley, Rodger Kamenetz, Valerie Martin, Stuart Dybek, Carol Muske, Alison Deming, Richard Katrovas, Edward Hirsch, and C.K. Williams have taught in the program. Attendees may also earn up to six semester hours of academic credit through Western Michigan University.

More information on the Prague Summer Program is available at
http://www.wmich.edu/studyabroad/prague, by email at prague@wmich.edu, or at 616 387 3965.

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