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Prof. Kirsti Sandy Wins 2017 Raven Prize in Creative Nonfiction

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Kirsti Sandy, professor of English and 2017 Raven Prize in Creative Nonfiction winner
Kirsti Sandy, professor of English and 2017 Raven Prize in Creative Nonfiction winner

Keene State Professor of English and current Interim Associate Dean of the School of Arts and Humanities Kirsti Sandy has won the Northern New England Review’s (NNER) 2017 Raven Prize in Creative Nonfiction. Her winning story, “I Have Come for What Belongs to Me,” will be published in the publication’s Issue 37.

“The piece is an essay chronicling my last road trip with a friend who recently died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) to the Bellows Falls grave of Hetty Green, the richest woman in the world during America’s Gilded Age.” Dr. Sandy explained.

Published by published by the staff and students of Franklin Pierce University, the Northern New England Review serves as a creative voice for the Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine region.

Paul Hertneky, author of the acclaimed memoir Rust Belt Boy: Stories of an American Childhood (Bauhan Publishing, 2016), was the final judge for the 2017 Raven Prize in Creative Nonfiction. He selected Sandy’s story because of its masterful prose and dexterous storytelling. “From the very first sentence until the last,” Hertneky said, “‘I Have Come for What Belongs to Me’ presents energetic, flawless prose that arrests the reader and won’t let go, tumbling through a physical and emotional road-trip weaving the past and present with telling details, startling and revelatory facts, pitch-perfect humor, and elegant insights conveyed through its characters’ sisterly interplay, amusing, enlightening, and ultimately haunting as only the best essays and stories can be.”

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