Hailey Reissman, a 22-year-old from Wilmington, DE, rose to accept the Sophie Kerr literary prize and $65,000 in cash at Washington College’s commencement ceremonies this morning. It is the largest undergraduate literary prize in the nation, the Sophie Kerr is awarded annually to the Washington College senior who demonstrates the greatest “ability and promise for future fulfillment in the field of literary endeavor.”
Hailey Reissman (photo provided by Washington College)
Reissman had impressed faculty from the day she arrived on campus from Thomas McKean High School in Wilmington. She produced everything from critical essays and scholarly work to poetry and non-fiction with an ease and elegance unusual for her age. “She doesn’t have a weak area,” sums up English Department Chair Kate Moncrief, who heads the 12-member committee that selects the prizewinner. “She writes with a sophisticated voice but also with great humor.”
Reissman, a member of Phi Beta Kappa who minored in Creative Writing, submitted a diverse portfolio that included academic writing, poems, fiction and creative non-fiction. The subjects of her creative work include family scenes, the literary life, and the frustrations of dealing with physical disability. In her introductory remarks to the Committee, she summed up her growth as a writer during her years at Washington College this way: “I have had the chance to explore and tackle and then tackle again the subjects that accost me over and again: writing, language, transformation, youth, the disabled body, the ‘other,’ nature, the mind vs. the body, sense, and perception.”
Poet Jehanne Dubrow, the professor who advised Reissman on her “Senior Capstone” examination and paper, describes the Sophie Kerr winner as “a voracious reader, the kind of aspiring writer who understands that finding her own voice begins with reading, reading, and reading. In the classroom, she is the student whose quirky, imaginative observations always lead to ah-ha moments.” She is extremely modest and “her own harshest critic,” Dubrow adds. “She is constantly questioning her own writing, asking her poems and essays, ‘Are you good enough?’ ”
Mark Nowak, the director of the Rose O’Neill Literary House at Washington College, was struck by the “fully developed voice” in such a young writer. “She is wildly creative,” he says, “and an exceptional talent whose writing electrifies everyone who reads it. She’s destined for great things.”
The Sophie Kerr Prize is the namesake of an Eastern Shore writer who made her fortune in New York writing women’s fiction during the 1930s and 1940s.
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