Ish Harris-Wolff Nominated for Writing Award

Ish Harris-Wolff in Core Reserve has been nominated for the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) Intro Journals Project award in fiction, a national literary competition for the discovery and publication of the best new works by students currently enrolled in the writing programs. An excerpt from her novel-in-progress, “A Magpie’s Heart” was chosen from short stories and novel excerpts submitted by graduate students in Northwestern’s Masters in Creative Writing (MCW) Program.

“I was stunned when I got the news,” Ish says. “I’ll be even more stunned if I win the national competition. My novel is in the fantasy genre and academia’s a little ambivalent about works outside of mainstream literary writing.”

MCW used outside judges to decide which pieces would be sent to the national competition in fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. The judge for the fiction category was book reviewer Donna Seaman, an associate editor for Booklist and host of the radio program “Open Books” on WLUW in Chicago and online at www.openbooksradio.org.

The prize is $100 and publication in the fall or winter issue of the AWP’s literary magazine. Winners will be announced in spring 2008.

Ish is in her second year of the graduate writing program and has a Certificate in Creative Writing: Short and Long Fiction from UCLA Extension Writers’ Program.