Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) announced the winners of the 84th annual McKinney Writing Contest on April 9 with the help of award-winning author and director of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Lan Samantha Chang.

The McKinney Writing Contest is a longstanding tradition at RPI which recognizes exceptional student writers across a variety of forms and genres. Students are invited to submit original works in Poetry, Creative Prose and Drama, Academic Essay, Electronic Media, and Writing for Social Change, each with undergraduate and graduate divisions. Each year, more than 200 submissions are received, and over $4,000 in prizes are awarded. The presence of Lan Samantha Chang – author of prize-winning works The Family Chao and Hunger – added inspiration and encouragement to the announcement of this year’s winners.

“At RPI, we honor our student writers because their voices help us make sense of the world – its complexity, its beauty, and its challenges,” said Skye Anicca, Ph.D., a lecturer in the Department of Communication and Media and chair of the McKinney Award Committee. “The McKinney Contest celebrates creative and intellectual courage, and having Lan Samantha Chang with us this year deepened that celebration. Her work embodies the kind of literary excellence and emotional truth we hope to inspire in our students.”  

This year’s first-place winners include Nyati Misra in Undergraduate Poetry for “3000,” a piece that connects ancestral experience and contemporary life, and Allyson Smith in Graduate Poetry for her spare and lyrical work “East of Denver.”  

Bianca Bacchus took the top prize in Undergraduate Creative Prose and Drama for “Persephone and I,” an emotionally resonant narrative. Justin Buergi was awarded first in the Graduate division for “Blink,” an entertaining and sharply observed work of political satire.

In the Academic Essay category, Allie Labrecque won in the Undergraduate division for “A Cup of Colonialism: The Lifecycle of a Lipton Tea Bag,” an essay that uniquely and precisely connects global history with personal reflection. Fahmi Fahroji received the Graduate Academic Essay prize for “Coal Extraction and the Unruly Entanglements of Lives and Research in Borneo’s Mining Zones,” a complex narrative on the human experience in fieldwork.

Michelle Lin earned first place in the Undergraduate Electronic Media category for “Defining the Stitches,” an exploration of fashion in cultural history. Graduate students Allie ES Wist and Hans Tursack won in the same category for their collaborative piece “Ruins We Already Have,” a work combining text, photography, and sound into a piercing narrative about the environment.

The Writing for Social Change category, which highlights the role of language in advancing equity and justice, awarded first place to Dempsey Vogel for “A Modern Proposal,” an inventive satire inspired by Jonathan Swift.

“The range and depth of talent among RPI students never ceases to amaze me,” Anicca said. “Their writing reflects not only skill and originality, but a deep engagement with the world around them. It’s inspiring to see how their voices – and their vision – are helping to shape the future.”

For a full list of award winners and their works, please visit here: https://hass.rpi.edu/mckinney-student-contest-winners-2025 

The McKinney Writing Contest was established in 1941 by Dr. Samuel P. McKinney, Class of 1884, as a memorial to his wife, Mary A. Earl McKinney. It is administered by the Department of Communication and Media in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, and supported by the Vollmer W. Fries Lecture Series, the Rensselaer Union, Friends of Folsom Library, and The New York State Writers Institute.