AWARDS & HONORS



2026


Named for Anya Silver, celebrated poet and beloved professor in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Mercer’s Academy of American Poets University and College Prize offers Mercer undergraduates a $100 award for a single accomplished poem selected by a judge from outside Mercer’s faculty and a publication on the Academy of American Poets website, as well as consideration for the Academy’s Aliki Perroti and Seth Frank Most Promising Young Poet Award.


2022


Honeytrap” — Pushcart Prize Nomination


Honeytrap” — 1st Place, Fatal Flaw’s 2022 Flash Fiction Contest

“‘Honeytrap’ dances between worlds, between elements of familiar myths and fairy tales and commonplace ones from our modern lives; it questions in delightful, awake language those age-old symbols—apples and sleeping girls—all while offering a narrative that tells the reader: This is a lie. Keep listening. The last line is deliciously fierce. The fatal flaw will surprise you. I kept reading this story again and again to understand its magic.”

Cheryl Pappas, guest judge & author of The Clarity of Hunger