Free and open to the public, this reading will take place outdoors on the east side of the museum
Join Inprint for a celebratory reading of the 2024 Inprint Prize Winners. This spring, Inprint awarded 10 prizes ranging from $1,000 – $10,000 to nine students studying creative writing at the University of Houston and one undergraduate at Rice University. The winners, selected by outside judges, will give short readings from their prize-winning works. Inprint Executive Director Rich Levy will give opening remarks and Inprint Board Member Ron Restrepo will make a toast to the winners.
The event will be part of the Menil’s Neighborhood Community Day. Earlier that afternoon, the Inprint Poetry Buskers will be on-site writing free poems for Community Day attendees. For the full schedule of the Menil’s Neighborhood Community Day events, click here.
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 $201,500 in direct support to these students, and since 1983, Inprint’s support of 600+ emerging writers has totaled more than $4.5 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.
2024 Inprint Prizewinners:
Inprint Donald Barthelme Prize in Nonfiction: Nick Almeida’s stories and essays have appeared in Kenyon Review, Pleiades, Southeast Review, and elsewhere. Almeida, a PhD candidate at the University of Houston, holds an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers, where he edited Bat City Review. His chapbook, Masterplans, was selected by Steve Almond as grand prize winner of the inaugural Masters Review Chapbook Open in fiction, and is available now.
Inprint Donald Barthelme Prize in Poetry: Jari Bradley (they/them) is a San Francisco native. They are the recipient of an Inprint C. Glenn Cambor Fellowship, an Inprint Donald Barthelme Poetry Prize recipient, and a Cave Canem fellow. Their poems have been published in Callaloo, Virginia Quarterly Review, Academy of American Poets (Poem-A Day), and elsewhere. They are currently a PhD candidate in Creative Writing and Literature at the University of Houston and a Poetry Editor for Gulf Coast Journal.
Inprint Marion Barthelme Gulf Coast Prize: Leisa Loan is a poet, editor, translator, and educator from Boston, MA. She is pursuing a PhD in Critical Poetics at the University of Houston where she is an Inprint C. Glenn Cambor Fellow. She currently serves as the Digital Editor for Gulf Coast.
Inprint Donald Barthelme Prize in Fiction: Reese Lopez is a writer and musician from Houston, Texas. He is currently an MFA candidate in fiction at the University of Houston, where he is an Inprint C. Glenn Cambor Fellow and the winner of an Inprint Donald Barthelme Prize in Fiction. He is currently at work on a novel.
Inprint Marion Barthelme Prize in Creative Writing at Rice University: Hadley Medlock is a writer of nonfiction and poetry from small-town Arkansas. She is currently a senior at Rice University studying English & Creative Writing. Hadley also serves as the Arts and Entertainment Editor for Rice’s newspaper, The Thresher, and a nonfiction section editor for The Rice Review, a campus literary magazine. Hadley’s work tends to revolve around themes of environment, nature, home, place, and love, and she plans to continue this writing — no matter where she ends up after her impending graduation.
Inprint Donald Barthelme Prize in Fiction: Kelan Nee is a poet and carpenter from Massachusetts. He is the winner of prizes from The Academy of American Poets, Adroit, and the Inprint foundation. His work has been published by Poetry Magazine, 32 Poems, The Yale Review, The Missouri Review, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis, and is pursuing a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Houston.
Inprint Donald Barthelme Prize in Poetry: Bevin O’Connor is a poet and educator from Southern California and received her MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She is the winner of the Prairie Lights Donald Justice Poetry Contest and the Michelle Boisseau Poetry Prize. Bevin has taught writing at the University of Iowa and the University of Southern California. A 2022 finalist for the Best of the Net Anthology, her work can be found or is forthcoming in Bear Review, Annulet, Palette Poetry, Afternoon Visitor, Denver Quarterly, and elsewhere. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Poetry at the University of Houston, where she is an Inprint Nina and Michael Zilkha Fellowship recipient and serves as a poetry editor for Gulf Coast magazine.
Inprint Joan & Stanford Alexander Prize in Fiction: Originally from Richmond, Virginia, Biz Rasich is an Inprint C. Glenn Cambor Fellow and MFA candidate in fiction at the University of Houston. Prior to starting her MFA, she earned her BA in Mathematical Economic Analysis from Rice University and spent several years at the University of Chicago working on press strategy and research for a book about gun violence. She currently serves as a fiction editor at Gulf Coast and a program associate at Writers in the Schools. Her work has previously appeared in R2, Prairie Margins, and Hayden’s Ferry Review.
Inprint Marion Barthelme Prize in Creative Writing: Anthony Sutton resides on former Akokisas, Atakapa, Karankawa, and Sana land (currently named Houston, TX), as an Inprint C. Glenn Cambor fellow at the University of Houston’s Creative Writing and Literature PhD program and is a recipient of the 2024 Inprint Marion Barthelme prize in Creative Writing. The author of the poetry collection Particles of a Stranger Light (Veliz Books, 2023) and co-editor of Tom Postell: On the Life and Work of an American Master (Unsung Masters, 2024), Anthony’s poetry has appeared in guesthouse, Gulf Coast, Prairie Schooner, Puerto del Sol, Oversound, Texas Review, Zocalo Public Square, the anthology In the Tempered Dark: Contemporary Poets Transcending Elegy (Black Lawrence Press, 2024), and elsewhere.
Inprint Paul Verlaine Prize in Poetry: Mathew Weitman’s poetry appears or is forthcoming Bennington Review, The Georgia Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. He is the winner of the Inprint Paul Verlaine Prize in Poetry, the Loraine Williams Poetry Prize, the AWP Kurt Brown Prize in Poetry, and is a two time Pushcart nominee. Currently, he is pursuing his PhD at the University of Houston where he is an Inprint Brown Foundation Fellow and a poetry editor for Gulf Coast. He also teaches creative writing at the Harris County Jail.
Special thanks to Joan and the late 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 National Endowment for the Arts, The Jerry C. Dearing Family Foundation, Houston Endowment, The City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance, and the Texas Commission on the Arts.