USCL, Friends of Medford Library
Announce Winners of Fiction and Poetry Contests

The winners of the Elliot White Springs Prize for Fiction Contest and the Medford Poetry Contest were presented with their awards on Thursday, March 17th at 7:00 pm in the Medford Library Atrium during the annual Friends meeting. The guest speaker was Michael Thomason. Thomason, the head horticulturist for the South Carolina Aquarium, is a USCL graduate who designed the new landscape plan for the library.

The winner of the fiction contest and $1,000 was Oksana Slobozhan. She is a sophomore exchange student at USCL and plans to attend USC Columbia next year where she will major in Political Science and International Studies. Her winning short story, "Feeling, Feet, and Otherwise", is a story whose theme "focuses on how place worms its way in our psyche, how where we come from is always a part of who we are" according to Professor Phillip Gardner of Francis Marion University, who judged the contest. Professor Gardner also called "Feelings, Feet, and Otherwise" an "unconventional story" that takes the reader on an "internal quest that gives the story its narrative impulse and makes us want to read on."

The winners of the poetry contest were Brenda C. Hyatt with "My Child" and Oksana Slobozhan with "Tumbler." Hyatt, a freshman nursing major, is currently working towards her Associate Degree in Technical Nursing. Both winners will received $250.00 each. Honorable mentions went to USCL students Mandy Mitz, Susan Miller, and Jeremy Miller.

Professor M. Scott Douglass judged the poetry contest. Professor Douglass is the Publishing and Managing Editor of Main Street Rag Publishing Company, the publisher of his literary quarterly magazine, Main Street Rag and over 50 books. His poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and he was the recipient of a NC Arts & Science Emerging Artist Grant.