Sophie Foster ’24 won this year’s prestigious Sophie Kerr Prize. Now in its 57th year, the prize remains the nation’s largest literary award for a college student. Primarily a poet, Foster read two poems at the ceremony in the Gibson Center for the Arts, alongside four other finalists before the winner was announced by President Mike Sosulski.

Foster was visibly taken aback when she was named the winner. She thanked the English department and College and said that she came to Washington after feeling disillusioned with literary spaces that were “elitist and prejudiced.” She praised the College and her fellow finalists for creating a supportive environment. “It has been the honor of my life to come here and be among the impossibly rare community I’ve been granted here,” she said. 

Foster’s portfolio submission was a collection of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction themed around the notion of liminality. “I think a lot of the major moments in our lives are fractured, brief, and fleeting,” said Foster. Her writings, she noted, “navigate the emotionality of brevity.”

Foster’s work stood out from an impressive collection this year, with the selection committee praising the finalists’ work across the board. All five finalists were from Maryland, including Liv Barry of Dundalk, Dante Chavez of Baltimore, Vivienne “Vee” Sharp from Westminster, and Joshua Torrence from Parkville.

“Sophie’s writing is lyric and beautiful and fluid, expressing complex emotions by allowing her readers to connect with her narrative on a personal level,” said Courtney Rydel, chair of the English department. “In reading her work, the committee agreed that we kept wanting more.”

James Hall, director of the Washington College Rose O’Neill Literary House, noted that Foster’s portfolio felt like reading a book. “Time and space dissolved, and I was completely captivated by this voice. This is big-hearted, hard-thinking Literature with a capital L.”

An English major minoring in creative writing and journalism, editing and publishing, Foster has been editor-in-chief of the College’s literary magazine, president of the on-campus Writers’ Union, and opinion editor of the college newspaper. The Reisterstown, Maryland native plans to begin a Master of Fine Arts in poetry at the University of Massachusetts in Boston next year. In the longer term, she hopes to pursue a career in publishing.

During the ceremony, 2003 Sophie Kerr Prize Winner and Ohio Center for the Book Fellow at Cleveland Public Library Laura Maylene Walter noted the unique nature of the prize and the impactful base it laid for her life in writing. 

“There’s really nothing like the Sophie Kerr Prize in the literary world,” said Walter. “The Sophie Kerr Prize is a prize for promise, for the work that still lies in your future, for what you may one day be capable of.”