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 Thursday, March 2, 2006, in the Medford Library atrium during the annual Friends of Medford Library meeting on the University of South Carolina Lancaster campus.

Michael S. Clark is the winner of the fiction contest. He is a junior at USCL who plans to attend USC in Columbia next year, where he will major in political science.

His short story, "The Stranger's Dream," "is an evocative, heartfelt story set during the Civil War. Yet in a way it feels as if it takes place in a kind of island of time outside of the war," said Tommy Hayes, director of creative writing at the S.C. Governor's School for the Arts and Humanities who judged the contest.  Hayes said Clark's story "has much strong dialogue, good description and a wonderful sense of the formal language of the period."

Brandy Williams is the winner of the poetry contest. She is a freshman at USCL who plans to attend USC in Columbia after she completes her two years on the Lancaster campus. At this point, she hasn't determined a major.

Williams' winning poem, "New America: A Zeugma for the Convention" was selected by M. Scott Douglass, the publisher and managing editor of Main Street Rag Publishing Co., who judged the poetry contest. "She is clearly ahead of the rest in her ability to use images to show conflict," Douglass said.

The guest speaker and honoree for the Friends' meeting was Carolyn Tolson, founding member of the Friends of the Medford Library and a civic leader.