Stephen Benz, Associate Professor of Professional Writing, has been awarded the 2022 Ron Rash Award in Poetry by the Broad River Review for his poem, “Uncle Jerry, Missing in Action.” The judge for the award was poet Virgil Suarez of Florida State University. Of Benz’s poem, Suarez said, “I could not forget this poem. The images, the lines, the way that the poem ‘poems’ through with a great amount of detail and subtlety. There is maturity to the voice here, and a beautiful resonance with words.”
Benz has published more than 20 poems during the past year, and furthermore published his fourth book of creative nonfiction, Reading the Signs and other itinerant essays (Etruscan Press). His poems have also recently been chosen as finalists for contests sponsored by The Telluride Institute and Outermost Community Radio (Cape Cod).
