June 22, 2016 -- Cleveland Heights High School graduate Maya Watkins, a rising senior at Hiram College, was honored for her works in poetry and fiction at An Evening of Hiram Writers on April 5.
The Lindsay-Crane Center for Writing and Literature, one of six Centers of Distinction at Hiram, hosts several writing contests throughout the year. All of the contest winners were honored at the event.
Watkins won first place in the Barbara Thompson Award for Short Fiction for her story "The Glass Train" and second place in the Vachel Lindsay Poetry Contest for "The Raptor Feeder." Incidentally, Barbara Thompson was a 1973 Cleveland Heights High School graduate. The Barbara Thompson Award was created in 1993 by Ruth Thompson (Barbara’s mother) and today includes donations from Barbara’s husband and brother.
Watkins credits her classes at Heights High as a major influence on her work.
"My high school English classes were very helpful, especially my two AP's. Mrs. Hull and Mr. Swider were both huge influences on my writing. I really believe that my senior English classes shaped who I am as a writer more than all my previous schooling," Watkins said.
The Heights alumna also won two prizes in the Echo Student Literary Competition, which is a competition among six schools and has three categories: fiction, nonfiction and poetry. She won first place for poetry with two poems, "The Retired Solitaire Champion" and "Pompeii's God," and won third place in fiction for her short story "The Dark Lord Bradley."
Watkins also won the Dorothy Garrett Martin Award in History at the end of this school year.
Watkins is a creative writing & history double major at Hiram. After graduation, she said, she'd like to find a way to use both her majors together.