Prof, Alumna Win Top Prizes In Literary Contest

An Old Dominion faculty member and recent master’s graduate from the Creative Writing Program won two of the three awards in the 2007 Bellingham Review literary contest.

Luisa Igloria, associate professor of English, received the 49th Parallel Poetry Prize and Natalie Diaz, who graduated in May with a master of fine arts degree, was awarded the Tobias Wolff Fiction Prize.

Both awards included a $1,000 prize and publication of the works in the journal, which is affiliated with Western Washington University.

Igloria’s poem, “The Clear Bones,” was one of 1,000 entries in the poetry contest. Igloria, who has taught at ODU since 1998, also recently was selected as the 2007 winner of the James Hearst Poetry Prize. Presented by North American Review, the award included a $1,000 prize.

Diaz, who received her bachelor’s degree in English from ODU in 2000 and was a four-year player for the Lady Monarchs basketball team, won Bellingham’s fiction prize for her short story, “The Hooferman.”

Born and raised in the Fort Mojave Indian village in Needles, Calif., Diaz said the story is about a “mythological creature that is equated with the devil in my Mojave culture” and addresses “the reality of violence, evil, alienation and exile.” Her story was one of more than 500 contest submissions.

In June, Diaz also won the Pablo Neruda Prize in Poetry given by Nimrod International Journal of Prose and Poetry for a set of three poems that was among more than 550 contest entries. She received $2,000 and a trip to the University of Tulsa to give a reading and participate in a poetry workshop/conference.