Utah State University English Grads Win National Stegner Prizes

Two former students of Utah State University’s Department of English have won first and second place awards in the 2004 Wallace Stegner Essay Contest. The theme of this year’s competition was “Reconciling Boomers with Nesters in the Emerging West.”

 

Brandon Schrand’s essay “Balancing the West: Mythology, Economy, and the Reconciliation of Old Patterns” won first prize in the competition. Schrand, who graduated from Utah State in 2003 with a master’s degree in American Studies, currently studies with authors Kim Barnes and Mary Clearman Blew in the University of Idaho’s MFA program.

 

Pete Gomben’s essay, “Having Everything Before Us: Boomers and Nesters in the American West,” received second prize in the competition. Gomben, a doctoral  candidate in environment and society at Utah State, has taken numerous creative writing courses in the English department and has regularly won first and second places in Utah State’s annual Scribendi Creative Writing Contest. Gomben also served as special projects editor for Isotope: A Journal of Creative Nature and Science Writing, housed in the department of English at Utah State.