Jason Miller of Hunlock Creek, Pa. Awarded the 2020 Etruscan Prize

by Vicki Mayk

Wilkes-Barre, PA (06/24/2020) — Jason Miller of Hunlock Creek, Pa. was awarded the Etruscan Prize during the Wilkes University Maslow Family Graduate Creative Writing Program online residency. The Etruscan Prize is awarded each year to a member of the Wilkes Creative Writing student community who submits one page of any genre (prose, script, poetry or play) that sings. This was the eleventh consecutive year Etruscan Press awarded a Wilkes University Creative Writing graduate student for their writing excellence.

Miller's submission, "Dream House," was the prize winner. This was the fourth year the Etruscan Prize was awarded for a work of poetry. Prize recipients from prior years were awarded for works of fiction, memoir, and poetry. Miller is pursuing his master of fine arts in the Maslow Family Graduate Program in Creative Writing. Wilkes University faculty members Gregory Fletcher and Nancy McKinley have served as Miller's mentors.

Etruscan author Dante Di Stefano judged the award. Di Stefano commented about Miller's submission: "In four and a half quatrains, 'Dream House' builds an astonishing structure, moving with the nightmare logic of a waking dream, puncturing nostalgia and engaging the past as a present kind of knowing, even as the poem ends artfully and ambiguously mid-action.

"The poem calls upon its readers to challenge national histories and personal narratives (the bloody battlefields we build monuments to, the bungalows that loom like mansions in our memories); in so doing, the poet acknowledges the systemic violence and domestic trauma that underwrite the daily safety and prosperity taken for granted in large swaths of American life. Additionally, the poem critiques the casual animosity of the touristic imaginary driving consumer culture, a culture that breeds disorientation and ends in viciousness ('…out of sorts, out of place, / but right where we needed to be.'). Reading 'Dream House' one can't help but lament that in the highly partisan political atmosphere of the Trump era, we are invited to participate in public stonings, of one kind or another, every day.

"With crystalline but surprising diction ('pummeled by falling / Space junk'), well-trimmed lines, and a kind of fearful symmetry, 'Dream House' recalls the brutality and empathy at the heart of a George Saunders story, the dreadful nuance of a Charles Simic poem, and a coiled razor-wire élan all its own."

Author of Ill Angels (Etruscan Press, 2019), Di Stefano is the author of Love Is a Stone Endlessly in Flight (Brighthorse Books, 2016). His poetry, essays, and reviews have appeared in The Los Angeles Review, The Sewanee Review, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. He is a poetry editor for the Dialogist. Along with María Isabel Alvarez, he is the co-editor of Misrepresented People: Poetic Responses to Trump's America (NYQ Books, 2018).

About the Maslow Family Graduate Creative Writing Program

The mission of the Maslow Family Graduate Program in Creative Writing is to educate students in the craft, life, and business practices of seven areas of study - fiction, poetry, screenwriting, playwriting, creative nonfiction, publishing and making documentary films - through a commitment to excellent mentorships, publishing opportunities, and industry-specific internships. The program offers a nationally recognized and widely reputed graduate creative writing program where students and faculty find the writing support, community, and market opportunities to become lifelong, productive, professional writers in all fields.

About Etruscan Press

Housed at Wilkes University and partnering with Youngstown State University, Etruscan is a nonprofit national literary press working to produce and promote books that nurture the dialogue among genres, cultures, and voices. Etruscan publishes books of poems, novels, short stories, creative nonfiction, criticism, translation, and anthologies.

Etruscan was one of five finalists for the 2015 AWP Small Press Publisher Award. Three works from Etruscan's collection of poetry were named finalists for the National Book Award and another was named to the Longlist (the NBA's "Top Ten" in poetry). Other titles are recipients of the Poetry Society of America's "First Book Award," the Foreword Reviews Book of the Year Award, and PEN Oakland's "Josephine Miles Award." Three poems published by Etruscan were selected for Best American Poetry. Most recently, titles published by Etruscan Press were awarded the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize, Mass Book Award, nominated for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Poetry, the Poet's Prize, named a finalist for the Foreword Reviews Book of the Year Award, Housatonic Book Award, Helen Smith Memorial Prize for Best Book of Poetry, and longlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay.