Two MFA Graduates, Poets Share 2021 Plork Award
May 21, 2021
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Rasha Alkhateeb and Aaron Tucker, both recent graduates of The University of Baltimore's MFA in Creative Writing and Publishing Arts program, are co-winners of the 2021 Plork Award. The award honors a graduate student whose work best exemplifies the spirit of the MFA program, exhibiting extraordinary creativity, originality and imagination in the integration of creative writing and book design. The recipient always demonstrates creative innovation and collaborative community membership as well.
"Rasha's exquisite artistry, from her poetry writing to her book design, blew us away. Her unwavering support of her peers was equally impressive," said Betsy Boyd, assistant professor in the Klein Family School of Communications Design and director of the MFA. "Aaron's personal development and artistic evolution were amazing. His thesis book is inventive and wholly original."
As an MFA student, Alkhateeb served as managing editor of Welter, the University's premier literary journal. She writes creatively and teaches academic writing.
Tucker is a Baltimore native whose work has appeared in Fine Print and Skelter magazine. He is an avid runner and pro wrestling fan who maintains a hate-love relationship with the word "organic."
Steven Leyva, professor of poetry who worked with both writers in Thesis I last fall, said of the award winners:
"Rasha's Hem is a book with a strong voice, an assured sense of craft, and a willingness to stitch together the various fabrics of language and identity. Rasha's poems are intimate, occasionally humorous, and always sharply observant. We travel across borders in these poems, across cultures, with a sense of wonder and style. What a joy it is to read the work of a young writer dedicated to growing her talent with every line, every image, every syllable.
"Aaron's poems take risks for the sake of playfulness and fresh syntax. We move through many personae and many shifting attitudes in his book Pareidolia. His poems paint a Rorschach test for the reader, and we see both what we want to see and what Aaron wants us to see. That's a difficult trick to pull off, but Aaron fully embraced the spirit of work + play = plorky magic."
Both Tucker and Alkhateeb also worked with Profs. Marion Winik (writing) and and John Wilson (design) on their books.
Each award carries a $500 prize from the Klein Family School of Communications Design's Randolph Avery Fund, which the award winners will share.
Learn about all of the 2021 graduates of the MFA in Creative Writing & Publishing Arts, part of the University of Baltimore's Yale Gordon College of Arts and Sciences.