Denise Gess Literary Award
Denise Gess Literary Award
Denise Gess Literary Award
The Rowan Writing Arts Department in the Ric Edelman College of Communication and Creative Arts annually hosts the Denise Gess Literary Awards. This student competition, named in honor of the late Writing Arts Associate Professor Denise Gess, offers cash awards for the winning poetry, short fiction, and creative nonfiction submissions in each category of $200 for first place, $100 for second, and $50 for third.
All currently enrolled undergraduate and graduate students in good standing at Rowan University are eligible to submit their original work for consideration. Students may enter in more than one genre.
Edward J. Czwartacki Award for Fiction
All currently enrolled undergraduate and graduate students in good standing at Rowan University are eligible to submit their original work for consideration. Students may enter in more than one genre.
Edward J. Czwartacki Award for Fiction
The Edward Czwartacki Award for Fiction was created in 1985 with donations from family members and friends. Czwartacki, who studied creative writing and literature at Rowan, died in the surf in Ocean City, N.J. while assisting an Amish woman whose long skirt became water soaked as she waded along the ocean’s edge.
Dr. Antoinette C. Libro Award for Poetry
The Dr. Antoinette C. Libro Award for Poetry, first awarded in 1989, was renamed in 2025 thanks to contributions from poet Dr. Antoinette C. Libro, emeritus professor and former dean of the Ric Edelman College of Communications & Creative Arts.
Pat B. Tweedie Award for Creative Nonfiction
The Pat B. Tweedie Award for Creative Nonfiction, first given in 2010, honors the memory of a woman who was a newspaper columnist, magazine contributor, and book reviewer, though her true passion was teaching writing to nontraditional, mostly female students. The award has been generously endowed by Dr. Timothy and Julie Linehan of Petoskey, Mich.
For more information, please contact Writing Arts professor Heather Lanier at lanier@rowan.edu
For more information, please contact Writing Arts professor Heather Lanier at lanier@rowan.edu
2026 Award Winners
Edward Czwartacki Award for Fiction
Graduate Winners
First Place: Jackie Massaro - "Last Day for Daughter"
Second Place: Jason James - "A Romance"
Third Place: Piper Egan - "Grace"
Honorable Mention: Bethaney Randazzo - "Journey"
Honorable Mention: Joshua Wilson - "A Last Look Around"
Undergraduate Winners
First Place: Samantha Szumloz - "A Nest of Brats"
Second Place: Adam Buckley - "A Burning Knight"
Third Place: Jack Long - "Theraputic Hysteria"
Honorable Mention: Melissa Morgan - "All the King's Children"
Honorable Mention: Kevin Perez - "Marigolds"
Dr. Antoinette C. Libro Award for Poetry
Graduate Winners
First Place: Shannon Van Meter - "In Rare Sonnet Form" & other poems
Second Place: Sam Fine - "Black and White Vanishing Point" & other poems
Third Place: Piper Egan "Moment" & other poems
Honorable Mention: Jackie Massaro - "Distance & Time" & other poems
Undergraduate Winners
First Place: Samantha Szumloz - "To Grow is to Decrease" & other poems
Second Place: Melissa Morgan - "A warm place in a cold world" & other poems
Third Place: Adam Buckley - "Anywhere But Here" & other poems
Honorable Mention: Liam Gonzalez - "Hindsight" & other poems
Pat B. Tweedie Award for Creative Nonfiction
Graduate Winners
First Place: Erin Roca - "Forgive Me Father..."
Second Place: Caitlin Hertzberg - "Fantasy Dads"
Third Place: Jason James - "Living Through the Yips"
Undergraduate Winners
First Place: Dhanya Janga - "A Distance Measured in Glass"
Second Place: Anthony Johnson - "Searching"
Second Place: Anthony Johnson - "Searching"
Third Place: Melissa Morgan - "Playing the Fool"
Past Winners
2025 Winners
Edward Czwartacki Award for Fiction
Graduate Winners
First Place: Jason James - "The Lemon"
Second Place: Aleikza Diaz - "Violet in the Sun"
Third Place: Tiers Congdon - "The Mug"
Honorable Mention: Piper Egan - "Hell, Bureaucracy, and Other Assorted Things"
Honorable Mention: Kelli Hughes - "Twelve-Thousand Pound Vendetta"
Undergraduate Winners
First Place: Katherine Claggett - "Angel Armies"
Second Place: Grace McGory - "Such Terrible Fortune"
Third Place: Cecilia Combs - "Love Letters"
Honorable Mention: Jack Long - "An Assortment of Groceries"
Honorable Mention: Cheri Czyzewski - "A Tragedy of Misconceptions
Dr. Antoinette C. Libro Award for Poetry
Graduate Winners
First Place: Kelli Hughes - "Resonance"; "Wife of Delaware Ave"; When Ma & Pa Built the Canyons"
Second Place: Piper Egan - "Discount Divine"
Third Place: Ellie Wash "Unreliable Narrator"
Honorable Mention: Aleikza Diaz - "The Seal of Biliteracy"
Honorable Mention: Shannon VanMeter - "In the Green North"
Undergraduate Winners
First Place: Edward Valderrama - "Cotard's Intrusion"
Second Place: Rev Foster - "Dig Deep"
Third Place: Grace McGory - "Home as an Adjective"
Honorable Mention: Dimitrius DeMarco - "Snowy Evenings"
Honorable Mention: Alexa Diamant - "The Mother's Curse"
Pat B. Tweedie Award for Creative Nonfiction
Graduate Winners
First Place: Julianna Perez - "Growing Taller"
Second Place: Ellie Wash - "Exploring Gender in Dreams and Dresses"
Third Place: Jason James - "The Final Out"
Honorable Mention: Kelli Hughes - "What We Hang On Our Walls"
Undergraduate Winners
First Place: Beth Anderson-Hoffman - "Four weeks in an ex-con's shoes"
Second Place: Emma Teiper - "Television and Cannibalism"
Second Place: Emma Teiper - "Television and Cannibalism"
Third Place: Steven Flickinger - "Dictionary of Professional Wrestling"
Honorable Mention: Evanie Moreno - "My ChiriQui"
2024 Winners
Edward Czwartacki Prize for Fiction
Graduate Winners
First Place: Emily Colon - "Hooked"
Second Place: Chloe Mortier - "Bonnie"
Third Place: Cat Reed - "Dear Ignorant Me"
Honorable Mention: Sean Wolff - "Saint Dom"
Undergraduate Winners
First Place: Amani Trower - "Pandora"
Second Place: Sophia Nigro - "Choice"
Third Place: Kathryn Lorren Libago - "Sometimes the True Monsters are the Ones We See Everyday"
Honorable Mention: Jack Long - "The Neighborhood Proxy War"
Honorable Mention: Alexa Diamant - "The Spectral Rift"
Honorable Mention: Alexa Diamant - "The Spectral Rift"
Rowan University Prize for Poetry
Graduate Winners
First Place: Nyds Rivera - "Inriri Cahubabayael"
Second Place: Sean Wolff - "The Remembering Tree"; "dime bags"; "Ponyboy"
Third Place: Ellie Wash - "Jenny"; "Ode to the [Un]Spoken Word"; "anything"
Honorable Mention: Shea Roberts - "The Rape of ____"; "Remove the Crossing"; "could Olympus have fallen to anything else"
Undergraduate Winners
First Place: Martina Forbs - "My Body"
Second Place: Mia-Sara King - "Panic Perfect"
Third Place: Grace McGory - "Three Elegies"
Honorable Mention: Olivia Phillips - "Like Blood from a Cut"
Honorable Mention: Allison D'Arienzo - "Creatures of the Irregular Heartbeat"
Pat B. Tweedie Prize for Creative Nonfiction
Graduate Winners
First Place: Katherine Bond – "On Indigeneity as a Way of Being"
Second Place: Gianna Forgen - "Reminders"
Third Place: Sofia Kolojeski – "Teeth"
Undergraduate Winners
First Place: Mia-Sara King - "Sunflower Summer"
Second Place: Yadhira Almonte - "All of the Stars"
Second Place: Yadhira Almonte - "All of the Stars"
Third Place: Steven Flickinger - "Time Machine"
Honorable Mention: Owen Miller - "Irrigation Pond"
2023 Winners
Edward Czwartacki Prize for Fiction
First Place: Tara Grier - "Mt. Ursula"
Second Place: Stephanie Ciecierski – "Barry"
Third Place: Katelyn Sullivan – "In Space"
Honorable Mention: Tiers Congdon - "Loose Thread"
Honorable Mention: Allison Padron - "The Wasting"
Rowan University Prize for Poetry
First Place: Grace McGory - "Love letters to the Artist"
Second Place: Rebecca Green - "Self-Portrait in Fragments"
Third Place: Nyds Rivers – "Things I hope I’ll never have to explain to my little sister"
Honorable Mention: Allison D'Arienzo - "Dissection of Self"
Honorable Mention: Eric Uhorchuk - "If I’m being totally honest"
Honorable Mention: Tiers Congdon - "The Taxidermist Said No/Sharp-Witted/Bay Area"
Pat B. Tweedie Prize for Creative Nonfiction
First Place: Jennifer Lendvai-Lintner – "A Mother’s Prayer"
Second Place: Katherine Bond – "Unsettled"
Third Place: Megan Kiger – "You Hide, Play Dead, Or You Run"
Honorable Mention: Diana DeSimine - "The Barista"
Honorable Mention: Nyds Rivers - "The Scrunch Method"
Honorable Mention: Tiers Congdon - "Circling the Drain"
2022 Winners
Edward Czwartacki Prize for Fiction
First Place: Megan Kiger - "Green is Grief in the Night"
Second Place: Allison Padron - "The Things We Give"
Third Place: Grace McGory - "Fibonacci"
Honorable Mention: Robert Pallante - "Night Dancing"
Honorable Mention: Tara Grier - "Nightmares"
Honorable Mention: Skyla Everwine - "Haystack"
Rowan University Prize for Poetry
First Place: Hannah Deckert - "Tide Song"
Second Place: Rebecca Green - "Unsteady Tides"
Third Place: Skyla Everwine - "Eulogies for Lola"
Honorable Mention: Sean Wolff - "Imposter Syndrome"
Honorable Mention: Nyds Rivera - "Heaven Thing"
Pat B. Tweedie Prize for Creative Nonfiction
First Place: Gianna Forgen - "Last Baby Walking"
Second Place: Daniella Emmer - "Honey and Glass"
Third Place: Thomas Klodowsky - "A Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About"
Honorable Mention: Colin Lemke - "What the F*!# are You Gonna Do"
Honorable Mention: Scott MacLean - "Rebirth"
2021 Winners
Edward Czwartacki Prize for Fiction
First Place: Ariana Tucker - "Hollow"
Second Place: Taylor Blum - "My Mother's Flowers"
Third Place: Katelyn Sullivan - "Swan Song for a Leviathan"
Honorable Mention: Chloe Mortier - "Skipping Stones"
Honorable Mention: Ellie Wash - "Little Monsters"
Honorable Mention: Chelsea Valcourt - "Moral of the Story"
Rowan University Prize for Poetry
First Place: Rachel Ventrella - "Sunflower Rising"
Second Place: Dina Folgia - "Sight, Self & Circumstance"
Third Place: Sophia Romano - "Pitch Pines"
Honorable Mention: Skyla Everwine - "Matriarchy"
Pat B. Tweedie Prize for Creative Nonfiction
First Place: Zachary Short - "Fallen Silence"
Second Place: Caleigh Reed - "Countdown to Origin"
Third Place: Dina Folgia - "Donor Notes"
Honorable Mention: John Reilly - "Psychosomatic"
Honorable Mention: Rachel Ventrella - "A Letter to My 13-year-old Self on the Night of My Attempted Suicide"
2018 Winners
Edward Czwartacki Prize for Fiction
First Place: Tara O’Day - "When She Asks to Go Home"
Second Place: Daniel DeLuise - "Unidentified"
Third Place: Dylann Cohn-Emery - "Strong For Us"
Honorable Mention: Daniel McGilloway - "Coulrophobia"
Rowan University Prize for Poetry
First Place: Morgan Douglas - "Red"
Second Place: Daniel McGilloway - "Bloom and Decay"
Third Place: Vasiliki Dinoulis - "Meraki"
Honorable Mention: Tara Lonsdorf - "Procrastinators, Pyromaniacs and Other Patron Saints of Holocen"
Honorable Mention: Kylee Bagley - "Far Away Friends"
Honorable Mention: Laura Kincaid - "Ghosts I Carry"
Pat B. Tweedie Prize for Creative Nonfiction
First Place: Alex Phillips - "Caught in the Intersection"
Second Place: Rachel Barton - "Haunted"
Third Place: Emily Strauser - "Fine"
Honorable Mention: Alix McKinstry - "An Ode to an Oak Table"
Honorable Mention: Justina Addice - "Music—A Double Sided Portrait"
2016 Winners
Edward Czwartacki Prize for Fiction
First Place: Michael Comoroto - "Fat Loser"
Second Place: Colin Boyle - "Nightmare in Suburbia"
Third Place: Stephanie Daley - "How the Seasons Changed"
Honorable Mention: Mark Ackerman - "Selene"
Honorable Mention: Joe Jordan - "Fire Sucks"
Rowan University Prize for Poetry
First Place: Robert Henhaffer - "Tuckahoe Road"
Second Place: Vasiliki Dinoulis - "Nodus Tollens"
Third Place: Jennifer Martin - "Gloucester County"
Honorable Mention: Ethan Stoetzer - "Doublethink"
Honorable Mention: Joe Jordan - "Then Brutus Spoke of Honor"
Pat B. Tweedie Prize for Creative Nonfiction
First Place: Alicia Rodriguez - "Eyes of the Storm"
Second Place: Susette Brooks - "Never Ending"
Third Place: Daniel DeLuise - "Uncle Jab and the House of Pain"
Honorable Mention: Michael Comoroto - "My Brother’s Ashes"
Honorable Mention: Liz Ditzel - "A Perfectionist’s Playbook"
Honorable Mention: Rachel Barton - "Calendar"
Honorable Mention: Nah’Ja Washington - "Now I Know"
2014 Winners
The Edward Czwartacki Award for Fiction
First Place: Katelyn Sullivan - "Harlequin"
Second Place: Regina McMenamin-Lloyd - "The Scarlett Splinter"
Third Place: Kristina Forest - "As of Yet…"
The Rowan University Prize for Poetry
First place: Joe Jordan - "Observations and a Cozy Chair"
Second Place: Stephanie Kohler - "Stuck on the Cusp"
Third Place: Regina McMenamin-Lloyd - "Nostaligia Poetry"
Second Place: Stephanie Kohler - "Stuck on the Cusp"
Third Place: Regina McMenamin-Lloyd - "Nostaligia Poetry"
Honorable Mention: Ojas Patel - "How to Make Samosas"; "Mom's Grief Upon a Return to India"
Honorable Mention: Dave Vogtman - "Dishonest Abe"
Honorable Mention: Ethan Stoetzer - "The Killing Tree"
Honorable Mention: Daniel DeLuise - "Afterlife"
Honorable Mention: Laurie Toich - "How to Be a Good Parent"
Honorable Mention: Vincent Lanni - "Write in Color”
The Pat B. Tweedie Award for Nonfiction
First Place: Ojas Patel - "Your New Face"
Second Place: Joe DiCarlo - "Six Days in the Absence of Life"
Third Place: Alfred J. Dansbury, Sr. - "Making Do"
Honorable Mention: Carol Magrino - "Subscribing"
Second Place: Joe DiCarlo - "Six Days in the Absence of Life"
Third Place: Alfred J. Dansbury, Sr. - "Making Do"
Honorable Mention: Carol Magrino - "Subscribing"
2012 Winners
The Edward J. Czwartacki Award for Short Fiction
First Place: Katelyn Catinella - "The Incisor"
Second Place: Kristina Forest - "Cedric the Great"
Third Place: Christopher Cullen - "The Path"
Honorable Mention: Alex Grover - "The Cemetery Watchers"
Honorable Mention: Samantha Brown - "The Couch in the Basement"
Rowan University Prize for Poetry
First Place: Joe McGee - "Have You Seen Me?"
Second Place: Samantha Brown - "The Devil We Know (and other Folklore from the Garden State)"
Third Place: Rebecca Force - "Authentic Philosophy"
Honorable Mention: Jayne Dzuback - "Carpooling to Game Night"
Honorable Mention: Regina McMenamin Lloyd - "Obsessive Love Disorder"
Honorable Mention: Meghan O’Donnell - "dream-walking"; Anita Sipala - "Resignation"
The Pat. B. Tweedie Award for Creative Nonfiction
First Place: Casey Otto - "Atop the Camel’s Hump"
Second Place: Lacey Bouchard - "The Bridge"
Third Place: Samantha Brown - "Hate Island"
Honorable Mention: Kayla Ewing - "The Hike"
Honorable Mention: Natalie Busarello - "The Great Blue Circle"
2010 Winners
The Edward J. Czwartacki Award for Fiction
First Place: Jackie Cassidy - "Hondo"Second Place: Hayley Van Amburg - "The Prize"
Second Place: Bill Elenbark - "Cigarettes Will Kill You"
Third Place: Sam Dodge - "Death's Room"
Honorable Mention: Steven Smith - "Let the Gun Do the Talking"
Honorable Mention: Anthony Dragonetti - "You'll Have to Learn to Love Me the Way I Love You"
The Rowan University Prize for Poetry
First Place: Steven Harbold - "Five Poems"Second Place: Katherin Fitzpatrick - "Stories I Tell Myself"
Third Place: Kate Peterson - "In Stitches"
Third Place: Ryan Wenzel - "The Natural World"
Third Place: Jonathan Wood - "Form Studies"
Honorable Mention: Samantha Brown - "Phase II"
Honorable Mention: Sarah Kasama - "Waves of Love"
Honorable Mention: Rebecca Force - "Is It Better?"
Honorable Mention: Jayne Dzuback - "Iron Oxide"; "Personal Poem #6"
The Rowan University Prize for Nonfiction
First Place: Melanie Pauker - "Solitude"Second Place: Bill Elenbark - "You Are a Runner, and I Am My Father's Son"
Third Place: Justin Eric Totora - "Fear and Loathing on the Road in South Jersey: The Fall of the Heads"
Honorable Mention: Jackie Cassidy - "Inked"
Honorable Mention: Steven Harbold - "The Homerun Heard Round the Neighborhood"
Honorable Mention: Sarah Kasama - "Accordian Bookcases"
2008 Winners
The Edward J. Czwartacki Award for Fiction
First Place: Bill Stewart - "Echoes"
Second Place: Joe Carlough - "I Need a Bike"
Third Place: George Jacob - "Translation" -
Third Place: David Brennan - "Things that Can’t be Seen"
Honorable Mention: Kamala Lane - "Kuwait, Briefly"
Honorable Mention: Daniel Paganelli - "The Heart of the Storm"
Honorable Mention: Steven R. Levine - "Rabbi"
The Rowan University Prize for Poetry
First Place: Jonathan Guito - "Snapshots from the Field"
Second Place: Katherin Fitzpatrick - "Poems 2008"
Third Place: Justin Davis - "The Homewrecker’s Handbook"
Honorable Mention: Janelle Tillman - "Hunger"; "Pay to Play"
Honorable Mention: Joe Carlough - "Penny Arboretum"; "Crystals"; "Passion fruit"
Honorable Mention: David Brennan - "Brother, Sister"
Honorable Mention: Joan Hanna - "Dragonflies"; "Chicago"
Honorable Mention: Anthony Belluscio - "Feeling 'Goodness'"
Honorable Mention: Calley Steel - "Finding Daddy"
The Rowan University Prize for Nonfiction
First Place: Rebecca Bland - "Snuff"Second Place: David Brennan - "Wonderland"
Honorable Mention: Christina Weil - "Never There"
Honorable Mention: Mike Breuning - "Realization through Service"
Honorable Mention: Gabriel Arnold - "Holes in My Pockets"