Two Women Scholars Win Prairie Schooner Book Prizes

The University of Nebraska at Lincoln has announced the winners of the 2016 Prairie Schooner Book Prizes in poetry and short fiction. Prairie Schooner is a quarterly literary journal founded in 1926 that is sponsored by the department of English at the University of Nebraska. Each winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize receives a $3,000 prize and will have their work published by the University of Nebraska Press.

Susan Gubernat, a member of the faculty in the English department at California State University, East Bay in Hayward, is the winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry. She is being honored for her poetry collection The Zoo at Night. Gubernat holds a master of fine arts degree from the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa.

Venita Blackburn, an instructor in the College of Integrative Sciences and Arts at Arizona State University, is the winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Short Fiction. Her manuscript is entitled Black Jesus and Other Superheroes. Blackburn is a native of Compton, California. She holds a master of fine arts degree from Arizona State University.