Six Students Vie for Washington College’s $86k Sophie Kerr Prize

The Award is the Largest Undergraduate Writing Prize in the Nation. Winner to be Announced this Friday.

Left to Right: Jaya S. Basu, Jove DiFiore Gleason, Logan Monteleone, Sheri Swayne, Evelyn Lee Lucado, and Seth Horan. 

Washington College has named six students to its short list for the 2026 Sophie Kerr Prize, which is valued at $86,702 this year. Now in its 59th year, the prize continues to be the nation’s largest literary award for a college student and totals more than the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award combined.  

The 2026 Sophie Kerr Award finalists hail from Maryland and New Jersey. Their portfolios include examinations of the forces of attraction, explorations of loneliness and morality, and themes of young adulthood, grief, and race. 

The 2026 Sophie Kerr Award finalists are: 

• Jaya S. Basu, a theatre and English double major with a creative writing minor from Bethesda, Maryland. Their portfolio contains poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and playwriting, and explores the forces of attraction that govern the universe and act on all bodies. 

• Jove DiFiore Gleason, an English major from Silver Spring, Maryland, with minors in medieval and early modern studies and creative writing. His portfolio includes published and non-published works of poetry, flash fiction, creative non-fiction, and excerpts from a novella and his undergraduate thesis. 

• Seth Horan, an English and communication and media studies double major with a double minor in creative writing and journalism, editing, and publishing from Frederick County, Maryland. His portfolio, Spring and Winter, includes four experimental short stories communing with the space between loneliness and morality. 

• Evelyn Lee Lucado, an English major from Westminster, Maryland, with minors in creative writing and journalism, editing, and publishing. Their portfolio includes a collection of poems, prose, journalistic articles, and academic writing themed around young adulthood, grief, and family. 

• Logan Monteleone, an English major with a minor in journalism, editing, and publishing from Upper Township, New Jersey. Her portfolio is a small collection of personal poems, many of which include metaphors on nature. 

• Sheri Swayne, an English major and creative writing minor from Baltimore, Maryland. Her portfolio includes creative nonfiction pieces, critical essays, and spoken word poems centered around race and race topics. 

“Reading their work, the committee was impressed with the delight these writers take in lyricism, and in language's ability to reach past the surface and delve deep for hard and important truths,” said James Allen Hall, director of the Washington College Rose O'Neill Literary House and associate professor of English, who described the collection of work as devoted, crystal clear in vision, and as possessing the belief that writing offers the world a balm. “This group of finalists is more than just a crop of good writers: they are necessary voices that we will be reading for years to come.”  

Sean Meehan, associate dean for curricular innovations and English department co-chair, added, “The Sophie Kerr portfolios always display a variety of excellent writing from students with a broad range of literary interests. It’s a hallmark of our programs at Washington College: good writing is composed across campus. That was the case this year, but the committee was particularly impressed by the strength of that variety. There is an urgency that comes through in the work of these finalists that demonstrates not just the promise of these young writers for their future work but also its purpose and need in our world today.” 

The winner will be announced at Friday night’s award ceremony at 7:30 p.m. EST in Hotchkiss Recital Hall in Washington College’s Gibson Center for the Arts. The ceremony is open to the public and will also be livestreamed at: https://www.youtube.com/live/swGU09pfbyo?si=NgEutvQw8LfCHKbx. 

This year’s keynote speaker is Wiley Cash, a New York Times best-selling author versed in Southern history, mystery, and family drama, who is currently serving as Washington College’s Patrick Henry Fellow. In November 2025, Cash was the recipient of the 2025 North Carolina Award for Literature, the highest civilian honor bestowed by the state of North Carolina. The award, presented by Governor Josh Stein, recognizes his significant contributions to literature and his focus on Southern life. He is the author of four novels. His short stories and essays have appeared in the Oxford American, Garden & Gun, Our State Magazine, and other publications, and his fiction has been adapted for the stage and film. 

About the Sophie Kerr Prize 

A proud tradition of Washington College’s liberal arts education, the Sophie Kerr Prize is named for an early 20th-century writer from the Eastern Shore of Maryland who published more than 20 novels and hundreds of short stories. In her will, Kerr left a generous bequest to the College with the stipulation that half of its annual proceeds fund a literary prize for a student. 

Open to all Washington College students from any major, the prize is awarded each year to the graduating senior who has the best ability and promise for future fulfillment in the field of literary endeavor. In the past, it has been awarded for both creative and critical writing alike. A full list of Sophie Kerr Prize winners since its inception in 1968 is available online. 

Portfolios submitted for consideration encompass the full range of writing that students pursue at Washington College, including fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, screenplays and drama, journalism, scholarly criticism, and research in all disciplines, and even song lyrics. A committee comprising full-time faculty in the English department and the President review and make the final decision. Winners are chosen for their literary excellence, regardless of genre. 

In addition to the life-changing literary award, the support made possible by Sophie Kerr’s gift continues to fund experiences and offerings for Washington College students throughout the academic year. For more than 50 years the endowment has brought many of the nation’s top writers, editors, and scholars to Washington’s campus including Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates, Robert Pinsky, Edward Albee, Joseph Brodsky, Gwendolyn Brooks, Lucille Clifton, James McBride, Eamon Grennan, Charles Simic, and Jane Smiley. Funding scholarships and internships and enabling research in literature, writing, and publishing, round out the impressive impact made possible by the Sophie Kerr legacy. 

 

- Dominique Ellis Falcon