Winners for the 80th annual McKinney Writing Contest at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute were announced on April 7 in a virtual symposium that featured author readings and a panel discussion on the benefits of creative practices during difficult times.

Authors Amina Gautier, Molly McCully Brown, and Susan Nguyen each read from their works before announcing the contest winners.

The McKinney Contest recognizes top writers in the Rensselaer student community. An average of 230 students enter each year to compete for a total of more than $4,000. Cash prizes are awarded in both undergraduate and graduate divisions in four different categories: Fiction or Drama, Poetry, Essay/Creative Nonfiction, and Electronic Mixed Media Using Language. The top prize is $300; second place is $175; third place earns $75.

“The annual McKinney contest is a special event at Rensselaer, because it demonstrates to the community-at-large what creative and versatile students we have here,” said Skye Anicca, a lecturer in the Department of Communication and Media at Rensselaer and the chair of the McKinney Award Committee. “This year, the committee and the judges were impressed with the sophistication of the contest submissions, which is indicative of students who are emerging not only as experts in their technical fields, but as articulate and passionate communicators.”

Boden Whalen, a biochemistry and biophysics student, won the Undergraduate Fiction/Drama category for “Onychophora (velvet worms).” The Graduate Fiction/Drama category was won by computer science student Elkin Alejandro Cruz Camacho, for his entry, “A Hundred Years of Excessive YouTube Company.”

First place in the Undergraduate Electronic Mixed Media Using Language category went to Brian Tsuji, an undergraduate industrial engineering and co-terminal supply chain management graduate student, for his entry, “Reversed Guins.”

There was a tie for first place in the Essay/Creative Nonfiction category between Divya Mohanraj, a biology major in the Physician-Scientist program, for her entry, “Culinary Corruption: How Fusion Food Threatens Authentic Cuisines,” and psychological science student Shannon Clark, for “The Expression of Femininity in Bechdel’s Fun Home and Morrison’s The Bluest Eye.” Communications and rhetoric doctoral candidate Allison Bannister took the graduate first prize in the same category for “Comics Composition and the Matter of Making.”

Nyah Philip, an environmental engineering student, won first place in the category of Undergraduate Poetry for “Black Vagabonds.” First prize in the category of Graduate Poetry was won by Jamie Steele, a doctoral candidate in science and technology studies, for her entry, “Deathbed Rhapsody.”

For a full list of award winners in all categories, visit this link.

The McKinney Writing Contest began in 1941 when Dr. Samuel P. McKinney, Class of 1884, established an endowment as a memorial to his late 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 it is supported by the Vollmer W. Fries Lecture Series, the Rensselaer Union, Friends of Folsom Library, and The New York State Writers Institute.

The virtual symposium was supported by funds from the McKinney Award Committee at Rensselaer, the English Graduate Student Organization at State University of New York at Albany, and the New York State Writers Institute.