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Wilkes University Creative Writing Student Sarah Bedford Wins Etruscan Prize

Wilkes-Barre, PA (06/27/2018) — Sarah Bedford of Hunlock Creek, Pa., was awarded the Etruscan Prize at the Wilkes University Maslow Family Graduate Program in Creative Writing closing banquet held on June 22, 2018. 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 ninth consecutive year Etruscan Press awarded a Wilkes University creative writing graduate student for their writing excellence. Etruscan Press is a partner of the Maslow Family Graduate Creative Writing Program at Wilkes University, where the press is housed.

Bedford's submission, "Nightmare on Bedford Lane," was the prize winner. The genre of her submission was memoir. Prize recipients from prior years were awarded for works of fiction, memoir, and poetry. Bedford is pursuing her master of arts in the Maslow Family Graduate Program in Creative Writing. Wilkes University faculty member Lenore Hart has served as Bedford's mentor.

Etruscan author Bruce Bond judged the award. Bond commented about "Nightmare on Bedford Lane" saying, "This writing is terrific overall in focus, imagination, voice, timing, and transformative arc."

Bond is the author of twenty books including, most recently, Immanent Distance: Poetry and the Metaphysics of the Near at Hand (U of MI, 2015), Black Anthem (Tampa Review Prize, U of Tampa, 2016), Gold Bee (Helen C. Smith Award, Crab Orchard Award, Southern Illinois University Press, 2016), Sacrum (Four Way Books, 2017), Blackout Starlight: New and Selected Poems 1997-2015 (L.E. Phillabaum Award, LSU, 2017), Rise and Fall of the Lesser Sun Gods (Elixir Book Prize, Elixir Press, 2018), and Dear Reader (Free Verse Editions, 2018). Three books are forthcoming: Frankenstein's Children (Lost Horse Press), Scar (Etruscan Press), and Words Written Against the Walls of the City (LSU). Presently he is a Regents Professor of English at University of North Texas.

About Etruscan Press

Housed at Wilkes University and partnering with Youngstown State University, Etruscan is a non-profit 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 non-fiction, 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, 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.

About Wilkes University:

Wilkes University is an independent institution of higher education dedicated to academic and intellectual excellence through mentoring in the liberal arts, sciences, and professional programs. Founded in 1933, the university is on a mission to create one of the great small universities, offering all of the programs, activities, and opportunities of a large, research university in the intimate, caring, and mentoring environment of a small, liberal arts college, at a cost that is increasingly competitive with public universities. In addition to 47 undergraduate majors, Wilkes offers the doctor of nursing practice, doctor of education and doctor of pharmacy degrees and more than a dozen master's degree programs, including the master of business administration and master of fine arts in creative writing. Learn more at www.wilkes.edu

Media Attachments

From left. Etruscan Press Executive Director Phil Brady, 2019 Etruscan Prize recipient Sarah Bedford of Hunlock Creek, Pa., and Etruscan Press Executive Editor Robert Mooney at the June 22, 2018 Maslow Family Graduate Creative Writing Program at Wilkes University banquet. (Photo credit: Shawn Hatten)

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