Alum Brandon Schrand Earns Pushcart Prize

Brandon Schrand, who graduated from Utah State University with a master's degree in American Studies in 2003, won the prestigious Pushcart Prize for his essay, "Eleven Ways to Consider Air." The essay — which also won the 2006 Willard R. Espy Award — was first published in Ecotone.

In addition to being printed in the forthcoming Pushcart Prize anthology, it will appear in the forthcoming anthology, Borne on Air: Essays by Idaho Writers, edited by Mary Clearman Blew and Phil Druker. Schrand has in past years had two Special Mentions for the Pushcart Prize. He  currently coordinates the MFA Creative Writing Program and the University of Idaho.

 

The Pushcart Prize - Best of the Small Presses series, published every year since 1976, is the most honored literary project in America. Hundreds of presses and thousands of writers of short stories, poetry and essays have been represented in the pages of its annual collections.

 

Writers who were first noticed there include Raymond Carver, Tim O'Brien, Jayne Anne Phillips, Charles Baxter, Andre Dubus, Susan Minot, Mona Simpson, John Irving, Rick Moody and many more. Each year, most of the writers and many of the presses are new to the series.