Prestigious Sophie Kerr Prize Goes to Sky Abruzzo ’25
Washington College News
As many have before them, a select group of seniors waited with bated breath this past Friday to hear the announcement of the winner of the 2025 Sophie Kerr Prize. Now in its 58th year, the prize continues to be the nation’s largest literary award for a college student and totals more than the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award combined. This year’s prize totaled just over $74,000.
When it was announced that Sky Abruzzo ‘25 had won, Hotchkiss Hall erupted in applause.
An English major with minors in creative writing and journalism, editing, and publishing, Abruzzo hails from Manassas, Virginia and has been serving as a senior editor at Spiteful Books since 2022. Abruzzo’s winning portfolio showcased creative and reflective writings exploring the interconnectedness of humans and the natural world. She read several logs she wrote about a plant she monitored over several months, a tribute to a magnolia dubbed Ruby Meryl.
“Sky’s portfolio demonstrates her incredible ear for language, eye for imagery, and taste for editing,” said Courtney Rydel, associate professor of English and chair of the English department at Washington College, who was part of judging panel. “Her sense of judgment is beyond her years, and her portfolio surprised us in the best of ways, as a gorgeous flowering of her potential for literary achievement.”
A member of both the International English Honor Society and the Engineering Club, Abruzzo has managed to blend her literary talents with a knack for tinkering and enjoys working with both words and gears.
“There is a limpidity to Sky’s sentences that maps perfectly to her clarity of purpose,” said Roy Kesey, interim director of the Rose O’Neill Literary House and lecturer in the English department. “Her attention to, vulnerability within, and imagistic descriptions of the worlds (both human and natural) she inhabits are the hallmarks of someone with a very bright future as a writer.”
Among her many thanks to her professors and fellow finalists upon winning, she closed with a thanks to her parents who “made her great.”
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