USCB Creative Writers Stack Up Recent Accolades
Creative Writing leaders, mentored by Dr. Ellen Malphrus, are making big splashes in the creative writing world.
“Each of these USCB superstars is shining brightly—well beyond our university,” Malphrus says of the four recent student honorees.
The students lead the Society of Creative Writers, publisher of The Pen, USCB’s six-time national award-winning literary and arts journal. Each of them has been bestowed with additional honors.
Elizabeth Blanchard, The Pen managing editor, has been accepted to the highly competitive and prestigious Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program at Sewanee, the University of the South. Sewanee is often referred to as the “Southern Harvard.” There she will continue work on The Deal with Nellie, a novel she has been writing in her ENGL B499 Senior Seminar Class with Malphrus.
Rebecca Taliaferro’s powerful poem Don’t Turn ’em loose, Child, was recently published in The Atlanta Voice, a highly circulated periodical that will reach 40,000+ readers. The poem is told from the imagined viewpoint of enslaved Nat Turner’s grandmother as she urges him to go fight for freedom. Taliaferro is The Pen’s assistant editor, and she is also president of the USCB student organization, Voices of Diversity.
Jackson Cox, design editor for The Pen, recently received a full scholarship to attend the exclusive Ossabaw Writers’ Retreat. The retreat boasts nationally prominent writers who gather to share professional insights. The competitive scholarship was based on a portfolio of creative writing Cox submitted to the scholarship committee, work he has honed in his USCB creative writing workshops.
Chad Merritt, editor-in-chief of The Pen and president of the Society of Creative Writers, was selected for an internship position at the Ossabaw Writers’ Retreat, based on the strength of his creative writing portfolio and his keen leadership skills. Merritt is a USCB Standout Student whose poetry is forthcoming in Chiron Review and whose fiction was recently chosen as a finalist for the 56th Annual New Millenium Writing Awards.
“I couldn’t be more proud of them,” Malphrus says. “As a team, and as individual writers and citizens, they are USCB’s creative writing icons. Their shining lights are a fine reflection on all of us at USCB.”
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CW 04/02/25