The winners of the student writing contest will kick off the Southern Women Writers Conference at Berry College Thursday by reading their work.

The winner in the fiction category is Berry senior Emily Caldwell, of Knoxville, Tenn., with her work titled, “A Brief Outburst of Pent-Up Aggression.” The runner-up is Berry freshman Ciara Stephens of Decatur, Ga. Her work is titled, “Solo.”

The winner in poetry is Berry sophomore Chelsea Fryar of Chattanooga, Tenn. The runner-up is Jenny VanFossen, a sophomore at Georgia Highlands College. Both students submitted several poems for consideration.

The winner for creative non-fiction is Berry senior McKenzie Reeves, of Cumming, Ga., with her work, “Popsicle Stick Jesus.” Runner-up is Kasey Haessler, a Berry senior from Dacula, Ga. Her work is titled, “Goodbye Squirrel.”

First prize was a $100 Barnes & Noble gift card. The contest was open to female students attending Shorter University, Georgia Highlands College, Georgia Northwestern Technical College, or Berry. Submitted work could not exceed 10 pages for poetry or prose. Judges included Berry visiting professors Alex Quinlan and Abby Greenbaum and judging was blind. The winners will read their work Thursday at the conference.

The Southern Women Writers Conference includes a reduced weekend rate for those who can’t attend the full four-day event Sept. 20-23. The registration fee is $100 for the Saturday and Sunday sessions or $215 for the full conference. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author Isabel Wilkerson is one of 12 featured speakers. Wilkerson spent 15 years interviewing more than 1,200 people to write “The Warmth of Other Suns”, her award-winning work of narrative nonfiction that tells the story of three people who joined the Great Migration of African Americans from the segregated South to other parts of the country.

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