2025 Randall Albers Young Writers Awards Ceremony & Open Mic

The Randall Albers Young Writers Awards Ceremony & Open Mic returned for its third year. On Saturday, May 17, we presented awards to young writers of both prose and poetry and listened as they read aloud from their work. We were joined by families, friends, teachers, and a host of notable Chicago writers. It was a touching and entertaining way to welcome our new generation of great Chicago writers. This year's poetry judge was National Book Award winner Daniel Borzutzky; the prose judge was acclaimed bestselling journalist Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan. 

Congratulations to our our prize-winning student authors. Our judges evaluated nearly 150 submissions and selected four place winners and two honorable mentions in each category, poetry and prose. Thanks to each and every student who participated.The quality of submissions was better this year than ever. 

Poetry

1^st Place: Oluwatomi Ogundimu, “Sundance // opulence”

2^nd Place: Emma Keating, “Beneath the Surface”

3^rd Place: Ashra Roshy, “know me, the ugly girl”

4^th Place: Parker Koehler, “what the tea leaves tell us”

 

Poetry, Honorable Mentions (in no particular order)

Simon Archer III, “Blue Swallow of Hope”

Bodhi Haines, “Gumbo”

 

Prose

1^st Place: Ivy Faust Lefebvre, “Directions”

2^nd Place: Fiona Jin, “L’Hôpital’s Rule”

3^rd Place: Lucinda De Maio, “Tail of a Frog”

4^th Place: Lucille Hachtel, “In the Modern World”

 

Prose, Honorable Mentions (in no particular order)

Aanya Santosh, “Everything Comes to Be”

Destiny Sacluti, “Rising from Setbacks”

Borzutzky is the author of six full-length poetry collections, including the National Book Award-winning The Performance of Becoming Human (2016), Written After a Massacre in the Year 2018 (2021), and Lake Michigan (2018). He has also published three poetry chapbooks, two volumes of essays and poetry, and four books of poetry translation.  He is Associate Professor of English at the University of Illinois Chicago’s English and Latin American and Latino Studies departments.

Tan authored A Tiger in the Kitchen (2011) and Sarong Party Girls (2016), edited Singapore Noir (2014), and was the co-creator and co-editor of 
Anonymous Sex (2022). She is the inaugural George R.R. Martin Chair in Storytelling at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, and Integrated Marketing Communications, and is an active member of the Asian American Journalists Association.

 

View the 2025 RAYWA Program.