Nevison named first winner of Patricia Aakhus Award

Southern Indiana Review, the University of Southern Indiana's nationally-distributed literary magazine,  the USI English Department and USI Foundation have announced Susannah Nevison as the recipient of the first annual Patricia Aakhus Award. The award is given to the best work across all genres published in the Southern Indiana Review.

Patricia (Patty) Aakhus taught at USI for 30 years as an associate professor of English and served as director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies and program director in International Studies. She died May 16, 2012 after a battle with cancer. The award was created to honor her legacy and her numerous contributions to the University.

"Patty's energy, enthusiasm and love of language, literature, writing and travel were infectious and touched everyone she knew and taught," said Matthew Graham, director of Creative Writing and associate professor of English. "Her commitment and devotion to the things that matter in life are still badly missed."

Aakhus published three novels based on medieval texts she translated from Old Irish: The Voyage of Duin's Curragh, Daughter of the Boyne and The Sorrows of Tara. A final novel, Dogtown, was published February, 2015 by her son, Halvor Aakhus, through Knut Press.

In addition to a $750 award, Patty's husband, Michael Aakhus, dean of the College of Liberal Arts, will present Nevison with a print he created titled The Knight and the Lion, based on a translation by Patty of an Old French poem. "Patty would be honored by such an award being named for her, much as I am. Over the years many of her students went on to writing careers and have carried on her legacy," he said.

Nevison will be on campus at noon, Thursday, April 23 in Couch Renner Hall in the Education Center (ED 1101) to read her winning poem, If You Come to the Sea and You Must Cross, along with other selections of her work. She is the author of Teratology (Persea Books, 2015) and the winner of the Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize in Poetry, as well as the 2013 Academy of American Poets Larry Levis Prize and the 2013 American Literary Review Poetry Prize. Nevison teaches and studies at the University of Utah.

Joining Nevison in reading will be poet Ross Gay, acclaimed author of three books: Against Which, Bringing the Shovel Down and Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude. Gay will be one of the poetry faculty members for the upcoming New Harmony Writers Workshop. He is a founding editor of Some Call it Ballin', an online sports magazine, and an editor with the chapbook presses Q Avenue and Ledge Mule Press. He has received fellowships from Cave Canem, the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference and the Guggenheim Foundation. He currently teaches at Indiana University and in Drew University's low-residency MFA program in poetry and poetry in translation.