Sophie Foster Awarded Washington College Sophie Kerr Prize

Amongst a hushed and eager crowd, Washington College senior Sophie Foster was named the winner of this year’s prestigious Sophie Kerr Prize. Now in its 57th year, the prize continues to be the nation’s largest literary award for a college student and totals more than the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award combined. The 2024 award is valued at just over $77,000. Primarily a poet, Foster’s work largely tends to personal internality and inclinations toward the natural world. She read two poems at the evening ceremony in Washington College’s Gibson Center for the Arts, alongside four other finalists, before the winner was announced by College President Mike Sosulski.

Foster was taken aback when she was announced as the winner and in thanking the English department and College for the honor and recognition, noted that she came to Washington feeling disillusioned by literary spaces that were “elitist and prejudiced.” She went on to praise the College and her fellow finalists for creating a supportive environment that she lovingly enjoyed over the last four years. “It has been the honor of my life to come here and be among the impossibly rare community I’ve been granted here,” said Foster.

Foster’s portfolio submission was a collection of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction all themed around the notion of liminality. “I think a lot of the major moments in our lives are fractured, brief and fleeting. A lot of what we remember are moments that happen by circumstance,” said Foster. Her writings, she noted, “navigate the emotionality of brevity.”

“In reading her work, the committee agreed, we kept wanting more,” said Courtney Rydel, associate professor of English and chair of the English department. “Sophie’s writing is lyric and beautiful and fluid, expressing complex emotions by allowing her readers to connect with her narrative on a personal level.”

Sophie Foster acceptance speech

James Hall, director of the Washington College Rose O’Neill Literary House and associate professor of English and creative writing, noted that reading Foster’s portfolio felt like more like reading a book. “Time and space dissolved, and I was completely captivated by this voice. Through lyrical prose and sharp-witted poetry set as close as Baltimore and as far as Britain, Sophie captured my whole heart. Her style is marked by sophisticated syncopation, lyrical control, verbal pyrotechnics, and—despite her young age—a wisdom that we will all do well to study. This is big-hearted, hard-thinking Literature with a capital L.”

Lauded by her professors as one of the strongest editors and literary citizens at Washington College, Foster has been praised for her consistent encouragement and support of her fellow writers. An English major minoring in creative writing and journalism, editing and publishing, Foster has been editor-in-chief of the College’s literary magazine, president of the on-campus Writers’ Union, and opinion editor of the school newspaper. The Reisterstown, Maryland, native will tentatively begin a Master of Fine Arts in poetry at the University of Massachusetts in Boston next year. In the longer term, she hopes to pursue a career in publishing.

Foster’s work stood out from an impressive collection this year, with the selection committee praising the finalists’ work across the board, which included an exhibition of the “provocative power” of the story; a collection of short stories, flash, a novella, and a personal essay on the “indulgence of abject and ugly emotions”; a crown of sonnets focusing on the cyclical nature of human love and experience; and themes of community and queer love through film criticism, personal editorials, and reporting.

“Everyone who submits a portfolio for the Sophie Kerr Prize shows courage in allowing others to scrutinize the work they hold so dear,” said Rydel. “It further takes incredible talent, persistence, and aesthetic insight to produce writing on the level that these finalists have created. We repeatedly were struck by the risk, ambition, lyricism, sonic texture, and insight in these finalists’ portfolios.”

This year, all five finalists were from Maryland. Foster’s fellow competitors included Liv Barry of Dundalk, Dante Chavez of Baltimore, Vivienne “Vee” Sharp from Westminster, and Joshua Torrence from Parkville.

During the ceremony, 2003’s Sophie Kerr Prize Winner and Ohio Center for the Book Fellow at Cleveland Public Library, Laura Maylene Walter noted the unique nature of the prize and the impactful base it laid for her life in writing.

“There’s really nothing like the Sophie Kerr Prize in the literary world,” said Walter. “The Sophie Kerr prize is a prize for promise, for the work that still lies in your future, for what you may one day be capable of.”

Walter is the author of the novel Body of Stars, an Ohioana Book Awards Finalist and a UK Booksellers Association Fiction Book of the Month selection. Her writing has appeared in Poets & Writers, Kenyon Review, Slate, The Sun, Ninth Letter, The Masters Review, Literary Hub, the Horse Girls anthology, and many other publications. Her debut short story collection, Living Arrangements, won the G.S. Sharat Chandra Prize, a national gold IPPY, and a silver Foreword Book of the Year award.

In announcing the winner, President Mike Sosulski noted how “humbled and awed” he was to be among such brilliance and congratulated the finalists and thanked them for “so much beauty.”

The Sophie Kerr Prize

A proud tradition of Washington College’s liberal arts education, the Sophie Kerr Prize is named for an early 20th century writer from the Eastern Shore of Maryland who published more than 20 novels and hundreds of short stories. In her will, Kerr left a generous bequest to the College with the stipulation that half of its annual proceeds fund a literary prize for a student.

Open to submissions from all Washington College seniors from any major, the prize is awarded each year to the graduating senior who has, as Kerr’s bequest stipulates, “the best ability and promise for future fulfillment in the field of literary endeavor.” In the past, it has been awarded for both creative and critical writing alike. A full list of Sophie Kerr Prize winners since its inception in 1968 is available online.

Portfolios submitted for consideration encompass the full range of writing that students pursue at Washington College, including fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, screenplays and drama, journalism, editing, scholarly criticism, and research in all disciplines, and even song lyrics. A committee comprising full-time faculty in the English department and the President review and make the final decision. Winners are chosen for their literary excellence, regardless of genre.

In addition to the life-changing literary award, the support made possible by Sophie Kerr’s gift continues to fund experiences and offerings for Washington College students throughout the academic year. For more than 50 years the endowment has brought many of the nation’s top writers, editors, and scholars to Washington’s campus including Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates, Robert Pinsky, Edward Albee, Joseph Brodsky, Gwendolyn Brooks, Lucille Clifton, James McBride, Eamon Grennan, Charles Simic, and Jane Smiley. Funding scholarships and internships and enabling research in literature, writing, and publishing, round out the impressive impact made possible by the Sophie Kerr legacy.

Video of the winner’s acceptance speech available here.

The section of the college green located in front of East and Middle Halls is a hotspot for these vital pollinators, with ground-nesting mining bees from the Andrena and Colletes genus thriving on the hill at the base of the Halls. Recently, thanks to her keen eye and love of insects, College photographer Pamela Cowart-Rickman realized that the area has multiple species of native mining bees all nesting together. Typically, communal nesting in aggregations has not been well documented.

Cowart-Rickman, who studied biology as an undergrad and developed a love of insects while working on her MFA in design, has tentatively identified five different species, all sharing the same nesting grounds – four different Andrena (mining bees), one Colletes (cellophane bees), and likely three cuckoo bees in the genera Nomada. Sam Droege at USGS Bee Lab assisted with the identification.

“The Washington College site provides rare nesting habitat for multiple native bee species, several of which are uncommon and unidentified. We always talk about providing plants to support native bees and other pollinators, but we rarely think about providing adequate nesting habitat for their survival. These native bees provide beneficial pollination to fruiting trees and plants, not only on the College campus, but also the Chestertown community,” stated Droege.

“They have been nesting amongst and on top of each other for several years in this same location,” said Cowart-Rickman of the bees she has spotted. “The various Andrena have the largest nesting area and emerge first in late February. The Colletes have a smaller area and emerge later in late April.”

From Hobby to Discovery

Spending her days photographing the goings-on and highlights of Washington College life for the school’s marketing and communications department, Cowart-Rickman devotes her free time to photographing insects and has been helping researchers identify and track populations through her photos since the Covid lockdown. She has found and documented several species for MD Biodiversity, BugGuide, iNat, and researchers at the Canadian National Collection of Insects. When she realized what she had stumbled upon right outside her own office building on campus, she reached out to Dr. Beth Choate, deputy director of the Washington College Center for Environment and Society. Choate, who has published research on the abundance of wild bee populations in urban and rural gradients, was also intrigued by the nesting sites Cowart-Rickman had found. The two decided to investigate further.

Washington College photographer Pamela Cowart-Rickman

“On a nice day in the spring, you can see the male bees hovering right at grass level. There were hundreds of these males searching for a female to mate when we were out there,” said Choate.

Females create a small burrow in the ground for rearing young and a ball of pollen and nectar is placed in each to feed the larval bee when it emerges from the egg, Choate explained. Once the males and females mate, the female returns to her nest and lays the egg in the carefully constructed burrow to develop.

“Ground-nesting bees need bare, minimally covered ground in order to dig into the soil. They also prefer sunny and well-drained soil, but it will be interesting to learn what is unique about the soil in this space and why the aggregation has become so large,” said Choate. “Since ground-nesting bees are solitary and do not form colonies, they generally aren’t as noticeable as this aggregation. Females often create nests near one another; however, an aggregation this large is unique.”

After seeing one of Cowart-Rickman’s nesting bee photos on iNat, and realizing the rarity of the site, Dr. Jordan Kueneman, a researcher with Project GNBee who is working on tracking ground-nesting bees at the Danforth Lab at Cornell University, reached out to Cowart-Rickman about possibly providing further research samples and information.

“We were very excited to learn about the ground-nesting bee aggregations at Washington College, for a myriad of reasons,” said Kueneman. “First, the size of the aggregation is substantial, and multiple species are utilizing areas of the overall site to nest. This scenario is ideal for understanding nesting requirements for bees and how those vary by species. Second, intermixed aggregations of nesting bees are particularly interesting to study from an ecological perspective, as the cost/benefits of varying nesting strategies and behavior can be more easily studied, particularly in the context of phenology, nest architecture, and risk of parasitism.”

Kueneman’s project hopes to provide education and awareness of ground-nesting bees, who are, as he notes, “a vital and overlooked group of pollinators essential to terrestrial ecosystems.” The project aims to leverage local participatory actions to study bee nesting biology at scale, which can enhance ecosystem and agricultural sustainability by promoting resilient and diversified pollination services.

He noted that due to its location, the Washington College aggregation can easily provide the opportunity for students and the public to learn about the biology of ground-nesting bees and the value they provide to the environment. He is also hopeful that knowledge of the history of the area and the site’s management can help inform how ground management practices on campus have impacted the population in the past and provide opportunities to explore how current management will impact this population in the future.

“Because of the size of the aggregation, the Cornell lab is interested in the type of soil in this location, so we gathered soil samples from nests throughout the aggregation in various locations,” added Choate.

Research and monitoring of the aggregation will continue as teams from both schools work together to study what makes this site so appealing to multiple species of bees.

Save the Bees!

A certified Bee Campus USA, Washington College has a long history of practicing and promoting conservation in and around its campus through its Natural Lands Project, beekeeping courses for students, food initiative internships and campus garden. One of its chemistry professors is also conducting research on new ways to potentially cure disease in honeybee hives.

Amidst all of this bee-focused activity, Cowart-Rickman has been impressed with how these solitary bees emerge each spring, creating a busy scene as they pollinate fruit trees, flowers, shrubs, and native maples, amidst students walking to class and the nearby traffic of a busy road through the small town on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

“Since I was a kid, I’ve always been interested in the tiny things, the things no one notices,” said Cowart-Rickman, who documents her insect photography on Instagram. Now, that interest is leading to an effort to protect a unique population of her favorite creatures.

In general, Cowart-Rickman and Choate urge the local community to become educated and make efforts to encourage native bee populations to flourish.

“Become aware of native bee species, how they nest, and what they feed on,” urges Cowart-Rickman. “A lot of pollinators nest in dried leaves, hollow twigs, rotting wood, and rough stone. Instead of burning these things in the fall, move them to an out of the way space until late spring. If you find a ground-nesting bee area don’t destroy them. They are above ground for only a short time. Plant native plants and create meadows instead of lawns.”

Choate also encourages less mowing and less structure to gardens to encourage native bees to feel welcome. “Avoiding fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides will go a long way in encouraging native bee populations. Traditional lawn “weeds” such as clovers are a favorite for many bee species. And since many native bees nest in the ground, avoiding manicured beds that require mulching and supporting less managed, wildflower plantings in your yard will provide habitat for nesting and a plethora of food for pollinators.”

Kueneman urges those interested in protecting bees to help out ProjectGNBee. “Researchers at Cornell are seeking your help to better understand and protect the nests of solitary, gentle, ground-nesting bees. Even though 90 percent of bees are solitary and 70 percent of bees nest in the ground, knowledge about solitary ground-nesting bees is lacking,” he notes. “Our project will study how factors like soil characteristics affect these bee populations, which will help us learn how to protect and improve nesting habitat for bees that provide crucial pollination services. By promoting nesting sites for native bees, we can enhance ecosystem and agricultural sustainability and resilience.” You can participate in this community science project by joining Project GNbee’s iNaturalist project here.