NATCHITOCHES – Lia Portillo of Galliano and Nathan Williams of Elysian Fields, Texas, have been named the winners of the annual NSU-Argus Award for Excellence in Creative Writing. Argus is Northwestern State’s literary magazine. Associate Professor and Coordinator of Creative Writing Programs Rebecca Macijeski is the faculty sponsor of Argus. Izzy Plauche of Zachary is editor-in-chief.
“Both these poets fight against erasure and embody the revolutionary spirit of poetry; the need for poetry as our power, right now more than ever,” said contest judge Emily Arnason Casey “They delight in the particular joys of identity and being, and in so doing, create the world we long for: one of joy and hope.”
Portillo is a junior communication major with an English and film minor. She was born in Honduras and immigrated to the United States at the age of nine to Galliano. Portillo is editor-in-chief of the Current Sauce, NSU’s student newspaper. She is president of the Hispanic Student Journalist Association and is involved in Purple Jackets, Speech and Debate and the Demon Mentor Network. Her writing explores her lived experiences and the struggles of identity. She hopes readers can see themselves in her writing.
“These poems explore the complexities of multilingual identity and culture,” said Casey. “They capture the interiority of a struggle to both belong and remain connected to one’s past.”
Williams says he is a writer for the love of words, where they can take us, and what they can do. He is a sophomore at NSU majoring in English. Williams has explored writing in any form he can get his hands on, including journalism and creative nonfiction. He has been published in Appelley’s 2020 Rising Stars Collection where he won third place nationally in the 9th-12th grade division and competed in UIL Photojournalism and Ready Writing before moving to Louisiana.
“Poetry is an act of revolution and the poems of ‘Someday,’ with lyrical imagination and leaps of form, embody just that,” said Casey. “The breadth of these poems startles and emboldens the writing.”
Casey’s first book, a collection of essays titled “Made Holy,” was published by the University of Georgia Press, Crux: The Georgia Series in Literary Nonfiction. Her essays have appeared in publications such as Fourth Genre, About Place Journal, Hotel Amerika, The Normal School, Hunger Mountain, and American Literary Review. She is particularly interested in the lyric imagination and experimental forms of the essay, as well as the themes of nature, place, rural landscapes, addiction/ recovery, domesticity, motherhood, race, and creating a more just world. Casey is a lecturer at the University of Vermont.
Finalists for the award were Clara Guidry, Emily Thomisee, Seth Wimberly, Joan Barbier, and Gabriel Parker.
