Hollins University Scholar to Receive the 2017 Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize

Elizabeth Poliner, associate professor of English at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia, has been selected to receive the 2017 Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize from the Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies and the department of English at the University of Rochester in New York. The award honors “a woman who is a U.S. citizen and has written the best book-length work of prose fiction.”

Professor Poliner was honored for her novel As Close to Us as Breathing (Lee Boudreaux Books, 2016). She will honored at a ceremony on November 2 at the University of Rochester. The prize comes with a cash award of $7,500.

Professor Poliner is a graduate of Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. She earned a master of fine arts degree at American University in Washington, D.C., and a law degree at the University of Virginia.