LRR 2012

Letter from the Editor

This year, the University of Connecticut has 30,525 students enrolled across fourteen schools and colleges, in one hundred and one majors. This provides diversity, endless chances to form new relationships, and the liberty to take a class on nearly any subject. It also means that it’s easy to get lost. It means that, because there’s so much to do and so many opportunities to take advantage of, life goes quickly.

My four years here have passed and – it’s hard to believe, even now — I’m no longer the painfully shy girl who never left her dorm room freshman year. This girl was so intimidated by the pressure of words like “future” and “responsibility” that she broke down in tears during her first advisor meeting. Today, my advisor, Professor Regina Barreca, is indispensable to me. Today, I am strong and confident. College is a process of self-discovery, and it’s certainly been one for me.

The Long River Review is something I feel so grateful to be a part of. It is vital, in my opinion, to any student’s experience of UConn. My relationship with the journal began when I was searching the English Department website, desperate for a way to meet people who love the same things I do. Our school is so large that I often feel it is more difficult to meet people; we get lost in the traffic of dining halls, in and out of classrooms, and in crowds at parties. My attempts to engage people resulted in being surrounded by hoards of others who were just as nervous and unlikely to start up a conversation as I was.

The Long River Review forced me, as it forces everyone who reads it, to slow down. Just for a while. While reading student submissions, I got to know people I had never met before in a way that the obligatory “What year are you, what’s your major?” introduction had never allowed. I’ve fallen in love with the poetry of my peers and been haunted by lines of prose as I drifted off to sleep on my Twin XL. One Saturday, I got home from work late; it was after 3 am. My roommate and best friend, Sara, was waiting up for me as she usually does. I sat her down at our dining room table and read her some of the anonymous poems from the stack I had been going through all night. We cried together at the end of a sweet, sad poem about a dog that had been hit by a car. In the end, the poem did not make the final editorial cut. Nonetheless, it remains in my memory, and that night it connected me to an unknown fellow writer I had probably passed in the hallways. In the moment that I read that poem, the author and I knew each other. And as a result of that connection through words on a page, I no longer see strangers the same way.

We’re always ready to write each other off. We all do it. I’m sad to admit I do it all the time. I first meet someone and almost automatically assume that they don’t have anything to say that will be worth the time it takes to sit and listen. The Long River Review is an invitation to listen. It’s a reminder that we are never alone, never lost. We just need to share our stories and read the stories of others.

–Ryan Wiltzius

Prize Winners

The Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize
Given by the Hartford Financial Services Group Inc., for the best group of poems by a graduate or undergraduate
Matthew Salyer, First Prize
Miller Oberman, Second Prize
Allegra Berndt, Third Prize
The Jennie Hackman Memorial Award for Short Fiction
Awarded in memory of Jacob and Jennie Hackman for the best work of short fiction by an undergraduate
Erin Townsend, First Prize
Ryan Kristoff, Second Prize
Myles Udland, Third Prize
The Edward R. and Frances Schreiber Collins Literary Prize
Given by David and Emily Collins for the best poem and best prose work by an undergraduate
Garon Scott, Poetry
Alyssa Palazzo, Prose
The Aetna Undergraduate Creative Nonfiction Award
Given by the Aetna Chair in Writing to support excellence in undergraduate creative nonfiction
Alyssa Palazzo, Undergraduate First Prize
Scott Allison, Undergraduate Second Prize
The Long River Graduate Writing Award
For the best piece of writing in any genre by a graduate student
Joseph Darda, Fiction
The Long River Art Award
Alan Huck, Photography
Gloriana Gill Art Awards
Jordan Cote, Photography
Jeanne Donegan, Photography
Michelle Penney, Drawing