Fun, food and prizes were the order of business at the English department’s Literary Pub Fest last Thursday, Mar. 26.
The Student Advisory Group for English, or SAGE, hosted the event. Two of its senior officers, Cali Clayton and Lauren Swanson, served as emcees during portions of the event, including a round of “guess the professor” with random trivia about the department professors. Both Swanson and Clayton work in the English department office. They also had a set of joke awards for the English professors. These awards were intended to give back to the professors who have meant so much to the students in the department. The awards were displayed on a table on the stage in Founders. They consisted of spray-painted gold miscellaneous “found” items such as a gold cup, a gold mustache, a pair of gold sunglasses, and more. One such award, “Most Likely to be Mistaken for Mark Twain,” went to the event’s main emcee, Michael McClelland, professor of English.
McClelland began with an explanation about the importance of reading and literature with an example of Dr. Jody Rambo and Dr. Ty Buckman’s son, Wyeth, sitting in Founders reading a Harry Potter book. He said that kids like him grow up to be English majors like those at the event. Those English majors, McClelland joked, go on to pay the salaries of professors. After that, he began announcing the department’s writing award winners.
Awards were given for writing that ranged from essays to creative pieces, covering both fiction and nonfiction. Students submitted pieces of their writing to be anonymously judged by a group of Wittenberg’s English professors. The winners of the awards also went home with a cash prize.
A notable mention is the posthumous winner of the play and screen writing award, freshman Alina Simon, who died earlier this February. Her writing was submitted and accepted by sophomore Camila Quinones on her behalf.
There were no submissions and therefore no winners for the freshman and sophomore categories of the expository writing award.
Junior Hannah Hunt and senior Trevor Brown took home two awards each, and senior Julie Cascino managed to take home three. Trevor Brown and Sean McCullough, ’15, took home the Allen J. Koppenhaver award. The catalogue states that the Koppenhaver award is given to the “senior English major who best represents the qualities epitomized by Dr. Koppenhaver: a keen intellect and multifaceted creativity that produced superior teaching and scholarship.”
“It’s a good time of the year to celebrate English and give out these awards,” Clayton, the president of SAGE, said about the event.
