Thursday, February 17, 2011 » Ariel Smith (sr) won the Kimberly Ruth Irvine Prize in Creative Writing at the William A. Fry Undergraduate Conference on Literature and Writing at Taylor University Feb. 10. Smith won for her creative nonfiction piece, �What Hunger Tastes Like,� which she wrote for �Writing Capstone� last fall.
�What Hunger Tastes Like� is a food memoir about her relationship with food and God, and how they seem to interconnect.
"I wanted to try writing a food memoir,� said Smith. �I read �Fat Girl� by Judith Moore, and that was probably the first food memoir that I read. And I just thought it was a really interesting concept and it�s kind of trendy right now.�
Smith entered her piece into the conference at request of Dr. Paul Allison, her Capstone professor, who was unable to comment because he is on sabbatical. She was accepted to read at the conference toward the end of Christmas break; she learned she won first place the day before she read.
The award was announced on Thursday, Feb. 10, but Smith and English major Libby Pfotenhauer (sr), who also presented at the conference, planned on leaving before the ceremony.
�I guess there was a little bit of a panic because Libby and I weren�t planning on going to the award ceremony, because Libby was my ride and she had some things she needed to do. So we were just going to go home,� Smith said.
Then she and Pfotenhauer ran into Dr. Nancy Dayton, chairperson, and another professor. They introduced themselves and told them they were going to skip the ceremony and go home.
"Later Dr. Dayton came over to me, looked at me [and said], �You should probably go. It�d be really good if you could go to the awards ceremony, OK?� Smith said.
Then Dayton added, �I�m trying to hint without being obvious.�
Smith and Pfotenhauer agreed to stay for the ceremony. Smith was awarded a certificate and $200.
Smith read nine pages of her piece at the conference Friday, Feb. 11. The day before, Pfotenhauer read her Capstone piece called �Austen�s Reading Community: Public and Private Libraries in the Works of a Literary Giant.�
Pfotenhauer was the only other Indiana Wesleyan University student who attended the conference. Smith said they were among mostly Taylor students.
�I really enjoyed it,� Pfotenhauer said. �Not only was the opportunity to present good for me just as a student, but it was a lot of fun. There�s an opportunity to win a prize like Ariel did and that�s good enough reason on it�s own, but I really did have a lot of fun.�