Creative Writing Awards & Competitions

Awarded for freshman poetry writing; open to students in all majors.  Applications are due at the start of the spring semester (specific deadline TBA). 

The Junior Quinn Award recognizes achievement and potential in Creative Writing majors or minors with junior class standing by awarding one or more recipients with financial support to attend a writing workshop or conference.

The Dipali V. Apte Poetry award was endowed with the thought that poetry has the power to inspire, inform, and transform the lives of those who engage with it—even when they pursue studies in other fields. It affirms that poetry is valuable in the teaching, reading, and especially in the writing of it. So that unique perspectives and experiences gain entry for this award, it is important that women not just men, those from rural not just urban and underprivileged not just privileged backgrounds, those with cultural traditions from near and afar all get seen. Thus, their words will add to the collective body of English, and will not be left in the shadows, but will illuminate us all.

Dipali V. Apte, MD, PhD, grew up in rural Illinois in a household full of the arts, music, science, and medicine. Her paternal grandmother, Sharada J. Apte—a poet at heart who wrote in Marathi—deeply moved her readers with writing that combined penetrating insight with accessible storytelling. Her father, Vishwas J. Apte, MD, MBA (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) nurtured in her a love of words, puns, and precision. His broad interests and intellect encouraged education and the development of craft, whether in the arts or the sciences.

The Department of English is grateful for Dr. Apte’s generous support and vision for this award.

Our undergraduate contests are made financially possible by the support of the Alpha Delta Phi Fraternity, which funds our judges and two of our top awards: the Folger Adam Jr. Prize in Poetry and the John L. Rainey Prize in Fiction. It seems important to provide history of the prizes’ namesakes—University of Illinois students whose own legacies have gone on to speak well beyond their times. Alpha Delta Phi, through the work of alumni Tom Livingston and Bob McMurray, has graciously plumbed their own archives to flesh out these stories. 

“Folger Adam Jr was a freshman and joined Alpha Delta Phi in the Fall of 1939. He was a promising poet in the eyes of the English Department as an undergraduate. He was drafted into the US Army Air Corps as an airman and wrote a poem to one of his professors back at the university during his preparations for battle on the eve of "Operation Hailstone: the Battle of Truk Atoll (now part of Micronesia) in February of 1944."

"Poignantly, his poem foreshadows his concerns about the deaths of untold numbers of young lives, and his own death in the upcoming battle, as evidenced by the poem's allusions to the large bronze plaque, listing Alpha Delta Phi brothers lost in World War I, hanging prominently in the fraternity house where the poet lived as an undergraduate. Folger Adam Jr gave the ultimate sacrifice before his poem even reached its destination at the university.”

The Creative Writing Program can think of no more powerful representation of how literature lets us commune with those no longer near or with us. It is fitting that the prize in Adam’s name has affirmed the lives and language of generations of poets after him.

The literary tradition within Alpha Delta Phi Fraternity, a central pillar of the fraternity since 1911, and Rainey and Adam’s names have brought generations of students the rare affirmation of the values we work hard to support in our creative writing and humanities classes. Stories connect us across time and places both physical and intellectual. There may be nothing more important than nurturing such points of connection in these times. The Department of English is grateful for the chance to facilitate this contest season and bolster the legacies Alpha Delta Phi so generously founded.

The Department of English Poetry Prize is awarded to undergraduate students with demonstrated talent in creative writing. Judges for this prize change each year.

The Academy of American Poets Prize is awarded to undergraduate students with demonstrated talent in creative writing. Judges for this prize change each year.

Our undergraduate contests are made financially possible by the support of the Alpha Delta Phi Fraternity, which funds our judges and two of our top awards: the Folger Adam Jr. Prize in Poetry and the John L. Rainey Prize in Fiction. It seems important to provide history of the prizes’ namesakes—University of Illinois students whose own legacies have gone on to speak well beyond their times. Alpha Delta Phi, through the work of alumni Tom Livingston and Bob McMurray, has graciously plumbed their own archives to flesh out these stories. 

John L. Rainey, for whom our fiction prize is named, was a fraternity brother of Folger Adam Jr. in the same class of 1943. 

“John L. Rainey also served in WWII as a navigator for B-17 bombers in the European theater. Blessedly, John L. Rainey did return home from the war. He ended up a public relations executive in Washington DC in his adult life, dying there in 1991. Although John L Rainey doesn't appear to have as direct a connection to fiction writing as Folger Adam Jr does to poetry, the Alpha Delta Phi Class of 1943 (of which both Adam and Rainey were members) was keenly aware of their brothers who died during World War II and it is their initial fundraising efforts which has provided the endowment from which our Alpha Delta Phi Literary Competitions have been funded since their inception decades ago. John L. Rainey's name represents the entirety of the Class of 1943 and their honorable dedication to their fallen brothers via the legacy of our Literary Competitions.”

The literary tradition within Alpha Delta Phi Fraternity, a central pillar of the fraternity since 1911, and Rainey and Adam’s names have brought generations of students the rare affirmation of the values we work hard to support in our creative writing and humanities classes. Stories connect us across time and places both physical and intellectual. There may be nothing more important than nurturing such points of connection in these times. The Department of English is grateful for the chance to facilitate this contest season and bolster the legacies Alpha Delta Phi so generously founded.

The Leah Trelease Prize is awarded to undergraduate students with demonstrated talent in creative writing. Judges for this prize change each year.

The Josephine M. Breese Memorial Prizes are awarded to undergraduate students with demonstrated talent in creative writing. Judges for the prizes change each year.