Department of English Award

Graduate students in the Creative Writing program in the Department of English can apply for this prize. Submit a PDF file that uses no capital letters, no spaces, and no punctuation in the file name. (e.g., poemfrommyheart.pdf is an acceptable name. Poem_From_My_Heart.PDF is a file that may experience technical troubles during the upload.)

All entries are judged anonymously. DO NOT INCLUDE YOUR NAME OR OTHER IDENTIFYING INFORMATION ON ANY OF YOUR UPLOADED FILES
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*For students applying to the UWM Creative Writing Faculty Legacy Award-Poetry, please submit up to three pages of unpublished poems in a single file..

Students who have an up-to-date Panther Scholarship Portal General Application and the College of Letters & Science Scholarships and Awards Application will be considered, typically in spring each year between February and April. No additional or separate application is required; students should thoroughly fill out the Panther Scholarship Portal General Application and the College of Letters & Science Scholarships and Awards Application. Awards given in spring are for the following school year so students graduating that same spring or summer are not eligible. E.G. applications reviewed in Spring 2025 are for Fall 2025; students graduating in May or August 2025 are not eligible.

Poetry Judge:
Elisa Gonzalez is a poet, essayist, and fiction writer. Her poetry and prose appears in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. A graduate of Yale University and the New York University MFA program, she has received fellowships from the Norman Mailer Center, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Rolex Foundation, W.S. Merwin Conservancy, Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, Hawthornden Foundation, Civitella Ranieri Foundation and U.S. Fulbright Program. She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Whiting Award. Her debut poetry collection, Grand Tour, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, was named one of the best books of 2023 by The New Yorker. It also received the 2024 Levis Reading Prize, and was a finalist for the 2025 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. FSG will also bring out her novel, The Awakenings, and a nonfiction book, Strangers on Earth.