HFA and CICS Undergraduates Receive 2025 Five College Prose and Poetry Prize
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Senior Anna Broyard and sophomore Rachel Martin were recognized as this year’s Five College Prose and Poetry Prize winners from UMass Amherst during an awards reading held on the Smith College campus on April 16.
Formerly known as PoetryFest, the Five College Prose and Poetry Prize celebrates the quality and range of student creative writing with participants representing Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke and Smith colleges, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and the Care Center at Bard Microcollege Holyoke. Each year, judges review entries and award two students from each of the colleges and a total of 12 winners were selected from more than 100 submissions.
“The Prose and Poetry Prize is a collaborative act with students from across campuses sharing their writing and, in doing so, shaping a shared literary community,” said Daniel Lavigne, Five College academic programs administrative assistant and prize organizer. “It is about voices coming together to create something larger than any one of us could make alone.”
Rachel Martin reads at the Five College Prose and Poetry Prize Contest on the Smith College campus on April 16, 2025. Credit: Ben Barnhart
Broyard, who is studying in the women, gender, sexuality studies program in the College of Humanities and Fine Arts, received the prize for poetry. Martin, a computer science major in the College of Information and Computer Sciences student, received the prize for prose.
“I want to thank everyone who played a role in making the Five College Prose and Poetry Prize possible and I really enjoyed hearing the other recipients read their work,” Broyard said.
“I truly enjoyed getting to meet and hear the works of students from each of the Five Colleges and The Care Center,” said Martin, who is also minoring in English. “I am honored to be recognized alongside some very talented writers from this special community.”
The awards reading was hosted by Matt Donovan, director of the Boutelle-Day Poetry Center at Smith College, and Jennifer Blackburn, center program and outreach coordinator. UMass Amherst MFA prose writer Lawrence Flynn and MFA poet Joseph Fritsch served as judges for the 2025 prizes.