Undergraduates: Submit your poetry for the 2025 Virginia Rucker Walter Poetry Prize!

Undergraduate English majors are invited to enter the annual Virginia Rucker Walter Poetry Prize!

This award acknowledges an outstanding English major. It is named for Virginia Rucker Walter, who was an undergraduate at UGA in the 1980s. Virginia Walter was killed by a drunk driver before she was able to graduate, but her family presents this prize in honor of her memory and in celebration of her love of literature.  

This year, the judge will select a winner to receive a $500 award.

The competition will be judged this year by claire cronin, a writer, musician, and alumna of ugacwp.

The deadline for all submissions is MIDNIGHT on Friday, March 21, 2025. Results will be announced on April 11th. Only one submission will be accepted per student. 

About the Judge:

Claire Cronin is a writer and musician from California.

Her weird nonfiction book, Blue Light of the Screen: On Horror, Ghosts, and God, was published by Repeater Books in 2020. A French translation, Les Écrans Sanglants: Cinéma d'horreur, mysticisme & regard féminin, was published in 2024 by Le Gospel. She is also the author of the poetry chapbooks A Spirit is a Mood Without a Body (Salt Hill, 2018) and Therese (HNGMN Books, 2014).

As a musician, Cronin has released records on independent labels and toured nationally. Her most recent albums are Bloodless (Orindal Records, 2021), Big Dread Moon (Orindal, 2019), and Came Down a Storm (Ba Da Bing, 2016).

Claire has an MFA in poetry from the University of California, Irvine and a PhD in English from the University of Georgia.

ENTRY FORM

You must login with your MyID UGA Email address (ex: myid@uga.edu) to complete an entry form. For instructions on signing in, please visit this page. 

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