The Iowa Review announces winners of veterans' writing contest

Tuesday, September 30, 2014

The Iowa Review in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences has announced the winners in a writing contest for veterans. The first-place winner of the 2014 Jeff Sharlet Memorial Prize for Veterans at The Iowa Review is U.S. Air Force veteran Katherine Schifani. Her essay, “Pistol Whip,” was selected from 401 contest entries in all genres.

Schifani is a graduate of the United States Air Force Academy who spent seven years on active duty in the Air Force. She is currently pursuing her Master of Fine Arts at Seattle Pacific University and lives in Colorado.

Second place in the contest went to Brian Van Reet for his story “The Chaff.” Runner-up prizes went to Terry Hertzler for poetry, M. E. Hope for poetry, and James Walley for fiction. The work of the winners and the runners-up will be published in The Iowa Review’s spring 2015 issue, and a public reading from the issue will be held in Iowa City in April.

Edited by faculty, students, and staff from the renowned writing and literature programs at the UI, The Iowa Review takes advantage of this rich environment for literary collaboration to create a worldwide conversation among those who read and write contemporary literature. For more information, visit The Iowa Review website.

The Iowa Review is based in the Department of English in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences at the University of Iowa.

The University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts and Sciences offers about 70 majors across the humanities; fine, performing and literary arts; natural and mathematical sciences; social and behavioral sciences; and communication disciplines. About 15,000 undergraduate and nearly 2,000 graduate students study each year in the college’s 37 departments, led by faculty at the forefront of teaching and research in their disciplines. The college teaches all Iowa undergraduates through the college's general education program, CLAS CORE. About 80 percent of all Iowa undergraduates begin their academic journey in CLAS. The college confers about 60 percent of the university's bachelor's degrees each academic year.