Kaitlin Doyle of Woodmere Wins Award for College Writing Contest

Kaitlin Doyle, a junior professional writing major, has won an award in SUNY Cortland's annual writing contest.

Doyle, of Woodmere, won the award for "Straight Back Chair," submitted for the Writing Creative Nonfiction course taught by Lorraine Berry, the project director of NeoVox, the College's international online student magazine.

She is one of eight students to receive $100 each for their winning entries in the 2011 College Writing Contest.

Doyle will accept her award at the College's Honors Convocation on Saturday, April 21. All winning entries will be published in a booklet dedicated to the college writing awards. The students will present their work at Transformations: A Student Research and Creativity Conference on Wednesday, April 18.

This year marks the 13th anniversary of the contest sponsored by the College Writing Committee, a group of faculty members from a range of departments across campus. The campus received more than 200 submissions of creative and academic work for the competition and the work was judged on superior thinking, originality and insight and excellent command of language. All submissions written for courses during spring, summer and fall of 2011 were eligible.

The 2012 contest will accept papers written for courses offered during spring, summer and fall 2012. Eligible papers will be judged in the following categories:

• Academic writing (papers based on sources or other data)

• Fiction (short stories)

• Poetry

• Scripts

• Creative nonfiction (memoirs, personal essays or travel writing)

• Media (websites, blogs or video). Judges place emphasis on writing content. Submissions should contain a minimum of 500 words of written text.

Students may also submit writing that did not originate in a course taken at SUNY Cortland. The deadline for the 2012 contest is Friday, Dec. 21.

For additional information, contact Professor of English Mary Lynch Kennedy at (607) 753-2086 or mary.kennedy@cortland.edu.