Three teachers from the CA English Department, Anne Strobridge, Jon Vogels, and Tom Thorpe, will travel to the University of Oklahoma on October 22-24, 2014 to attend the Neustadt Festival and Award Banquet. Accompanying them are the winners of the writing competition and this year’s Colorado Academy Neustadt Scholars: Grace Dorgan, Trinity Goderstad, and Andrew McPhail. The Neustadt International Prize for Literature is a biennial award sponsored by the University of Oklahoma and World Literature Today. It is the first international literary award of this scope to originate in the United States and is one of the very few international prizes for which poets, novelists, and playwrights are equally eligible. This year’s honoree is Mozambique’s magical realist short story writer and novelist Mia Couto.
In honor of each year’s winner, the university hosts a festival for writers from all over the world: lectures, readings, workshops for writers working one on one with the Neustadt laureate, book signings, and musical performances make this exciting, motivating and inspiring for those who love the ways words give meaning to our lives.
A generous gift by Kathy Neustadt, mother of Tess Hankin, Class of 2016, established the Neustadt Scholar Program at Colorado Academy in 2013 and inspired this student writing competition. The Neustadt family’s grant pays for all expenses for the faculty and students to travel to the Neustadt Festival.