News & Stories
December 14, 2017

Berry Professor Nominated for Prestigious Literary Prize

A Berry College English professor has been nominated for the prestigious 2017 Pushcart Prize.
 
Assistant Professor of English Will Donnelly’s short story, “The Urn,” was nominated. It was published in the Sept./Oct. edition of decomP magazine. The Pushcart Prize is an American literary prize that honors the best poetry, short fiction, essays or literary works published in the small presses over the previous year. Magazine and small book press editors submit up to six works they have featured to be nominated for the year and the winners are announced late spring.
 
Donnelly’s story “The Urn,” concerns a large nuclear waste repository that was to be installed at the base of Yucca Mountain in the American Southwest. 
 
“The waste would be dangerous for thousands upon thousands of years, and so a team of scientists was assembled to try to come up with some sort of warning mechanism to keep people away.  The problem, of course, is that our languages and symbols change over time, and so whatever sign or symbol was used would need to withstand the test of time and to keep people safe well into the future,” Donnelly explained.  
 
The Pushcart Prize winners will be announced late spring.
 

###

Written by Public Relations Student Supervisor Alexi Bell

 Back to Top