This is a free online reading and will take place via Zoom. The Zoom login details to attend the reading will be included in the Eventbrite ticket receipt emailed to each person that registers. 

Free and open to the public, registration required. 

In it’s continued effort to support the next generation of great writers, this spring, Inprint once again awarded 10 prizes ranging from $1,000 – $10,000 to students studying creative writing in Houston.

On Sunday, June 13, 5:30 pm CT, Inprint invites you to enjoy a reading by these talented emerging writers. After brief remarks from the Inprint Executive Director Rich Levy, winners of these prizes will give short readings from their work.

The 2021 Inprint Prize Winners include:

Blaine Prescott, Inprint Joan and Stanford Alexander Prize in Fiction
Blaine Prescott holds degrees from Western Kentucky University, Auburn University, and the University of Oregon—where he earned his MFA in fiction. He is currently a PhD candidate in literature and creative writing at the University of Houston, and his work has appeared in Ninth Letter and Shenandoah. He is from Kentucky.

Brendan Stephens, Inprint Marion Barthelme Prize in Creative Writing
Brendan Stephens is a PhD Candidate at the University of Houston. He is the recipient of the Inprint Marion Barthelme Prize in Creative Writing and two Inprint Donald Barthelme Prizes. His work has appeared in Epoch, the Southeast Review, Notre Dame Review, and elsewhere.

Paige Quiñones, Inprint Paul Verlaine Prize in Poetry
Paige Quiñones is the author of the The Best Prey, winner of the 2020 Lena-Miles Wever Todd Poetry Prize from Pleiades Press. She has received awards and fellowships from the Center for Mexican-American Studies and the Academy of American Poets. She is also the recipient of an Inprint Paul Verlaine Prize in Poetry, an Inprint Marion Barthelme Gulf Coast Prize, an Inprint Donald Barthelme Prize in Poetry, and an Inprint Brown Foundation Fellowship. Her work has appeared in Best New Poets, Copper Nickel, Crazyhorse, Lambda Literary, Orion Magazine, Poetry Northwest, Quarterly West, Sixth Finch, and elsewhere. She earned her MFA from the Ohio State University and is currently a PhD student in poetry at the University of Houston.

Sonia Hamer, Inprint Donald Barthelme Prize in Fiction
Sonia Hamer is an MFA Candidate in fiction at the University of Houston. She currently serves as Program Associate at Writers in the Schools and Online Nonfiction Editor for Gulf Coast. She is the recipient of two Inprint Donald Barthelme Prizes and an Inprint C. Glenn Cambor Fellowship. In addition to receiving a Pushcart Prize nomination, her writing has appeared in Creative Nonfiction Magazine, Archipelago,  plain china, and other publications.

Katie Edkins Milligan, Inprint Donald Barthelme Prize in Fiction
Katie Edkins Milligan is an MFA candidate at the University of Houston, where she is Fiction Editor at Gulf Coast, the UH Creative Writing Program Inprint Intern and an Inprint Brown Foundation Fellow. Her work is forthcoming in Fiction and North Dakota Quarterly. She has received support from the GrubStreet Short Story Incubator program, the Aspen Summer Words Workshop and the Southampton Writers Conference.

Niki Herd, Inprint Donald Barthelme Prize in Nonfiction
Niki Herd is the author of The Language of Shedding Skin and co-editor with Meg Day of Laura Hershey: On the Life & Work of an American Master, which features the poetry of and critical essays about disability activist Laura Hershey. Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Herd’s poems, essays, and scholarship have appeared or are forthcoming from Oxford University Press, Copper Nickel, the Academy of American Poets (Poem-a-Day), Lit Hub, The Rumpus, and Salon, among other journals and anthologies. Her work has been supported by the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Newberry Library, and Cave Canem. She lives in Houston where she is an Inprint C. Glenn Cambor Fellow of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Houston.

Despy Boutris, Inprint Donald Barthelme Prize in Poetry
Despy Boutris’s writing has been published or is forthcoming in Copper Nickel, Ploughshares, Crazyhorse, American Poetry Review, The Gettysburg Review, Colorado Review, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. Currently, she teaches at the University of Houston and serves as Poetry Editor for Gulf Coast, Guest Editor for Palette Poetry and Frontier, and Editor-in-Chief of The West Review. She is the recipient of an Inprint Donald Barthelme Prize in Poetry and an Inprint C. Glenn Cambor Fellowship.

Stalina Emmanuelle Villarreal, Inprint Donald Barthelme Prize in Poetry
Stalina Emmanuelle Villarreal lives as a rhyming-slogan creative activist. She is a Generation 1.5 poet (mexicanx and Xicanx), a translator, a sonic-improv collaborator, and an instructor of English. She is a Ph.D. candidate in the Creative Writing Program at University of Houston. She coauthored an article with a historian in the book Chicana Movidas (University of Texas, 2018). Her poetry can be found in the Rio Grande Review, Texas Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, The Acentos Review, Defunkt Magazine, Good Cop/Bad Cop, and elsewhere. She has published translations of poetry, including Enigmas, by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (Señal: a project of Libros Antena Books, BOMB, and Ugly Duckling Presse, 2015), Photograms of My Conceptual Heart, Absolutely Blind by Minerva Reynosa (Cardboard House Press, 2016), Kilimanjaro by Maricela Guerrero (Cardboard House Press, 2018), and Postcards in Braille by Sergio Pérez Torres (Nueva York Poetry Press, 2021). She is the recipient of the Inprint Donald Barthelme Prize in Poetry.

Nick Rattner, Inprint Marion Barthelme Gulf Coast Prize
Nick Rattner is Editor-in-Chief of Gulf Coast. He is a former basketball journalist and Editor for Ugly Duckling Presse. New poems and translations can be found in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Denver Quarterly, Salt Hill, Grist, and Asymptote. With Marta del Pozo, he has translated the work of poets Yván Yauri and Czar Gutiérrez. At present, he is translating the work of Spanish poet Juan Andrés García Román.

Inprint has been proud to support some of the world’s top emerging writers through annual fellowships and juried prizes for graduate students at the University of Houston Creative Writing Program and an annual prize for an undergraduate at Rice University. This year alone Inprint has provided $216,000 in direct support to these students, and since 1983, Inprint’s support of 600+ emerging writers has totaled more than $4.3 million. Recipients of these fellowships and prizes come from all parts of the world and have gone on to impact our local and national communities through teaching, writing, publishing, and more.

Special thanks to Joan and Stanford Alexander, The Friends of Marion Barthelme, Nina and Michael Zilkha, and the Inprint Board of Directors, who make these prizes possible. Inprint also receives support from The Jerry C. Dearing Family Foundation, Houston Endowment, The City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance, and the Texas Commission on the Arts.