Fourteen undergraduates were recognized during this year’s Nikki Giovanni Celebration of Poetry; the event took place February 8 during Virginia Tech Humanities Week.

The ten finalists who read their poems were: Tayler Butters, English, Creative Writing, and Professional and Technical Writing; Grace Daniels, English; Hallie Foran, Architecture; Joe Hughes III, Creative Writing; Jessica Ly, Industrial and Systems Engineering; Parker Morris, Creative Writing; Delina Phicadu, Creative Writing; Virgil Thornton, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Grace Turner, Creative Writing; and Charlotte Tury, Biological Sciences.  The four students recognized for Honorable Mention were: Amro Ali, Psychology; Randall Burton, Marketing; Carolina Nunez, Multimedia Journalism; and Amber Williams, Sports Media and Analytics and Communication.

Winners of the 2022 Giovanni–Steger Poetry Prize were: Phicadu, who was awarded first prize, $1,500, and a sterling silver and crystal award for her poem, “I Carry the Fruits of Her Labor and Wear It Like a Crown”; Butters, who received the second-place prize of $800 for “The Big H”; and Thornton, the recipient of the third-place prize, $500, for “Black and Red.” The prize was renamed in 2020 to honor University Distinguished Professor of English Nikki Giovanni, who established the competition in 2005 and continues to administer it; Aileen Murphy, a senior instructor in the Department of English, serves as the director.