Bowling Green, KY—Poet Heather Neidlinger, a teaching graduate assistant and second-year student in WKU’s three year Master of Fine Arts (MFA) Creative Writing program, has won the highly-competitive Intro Journal Award sponsored by the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP). Undergraduate and graduate creative writing programs nationwide nominate writers for the prize, and there are only eight winners each year in the poetry category. Each of the winning poems is published and highlighted in one of America’s leading print literary journals.

“I’m thrilled for Heather,” said WKU Poetry Writing Professor Dr. Tom C. Hunley. “This is the kind of prize that a writer can build a career upon. In her time at WKU, Heather has demonstrated that she has the talent and the work ethic to succeed as a poet. I look forward to reading a prizewinning book of hers down the road.”

Dr. Nancy Dinan, novelist and Director of WKU’s Creative Writing MFA program, added “The department is super proud of Heather. Not only is she a promising poet, but she's a valuable member of our program. I look forward to hearing more from Heather in the future."

Here is the opening stanza of Heather’s prizewinning poem, which will feature prominently in an upcoming issue of Quarterly West, the house journal of University of Utah’s English Ph.D. program:

Unbury my childhood and I will scatter from the hurt of it

Each limb and atom spread wide to let years,

burned from the mad dash of impossible avoidance, pass.

I drink, and smoke, and gather could-be lovers around

to smother these memories I do not have.  I tell myself

I do not have them. Get them out of my sight, I’ll say,

but at night the pieces will quilt my bedding.