Student Poet Wins Lucrative Literary Prize

BALTIMORE (AP) -- A poet has won the largest U.S. undergraduate literary award for his poetry and his thesis on "The Eternal in the Poetry of W.B. Yeats."

Washington College honored Alexander Stinton of Wittman on Tuesday with the Sophie Kerr Prize. One juror said many of Stinton's "poems evoke a strong sense of place, most often the Eastern Shore."

The college says the English department faculty awards the prize to the senior who shows the most "ability and promise for the future fulfillment in the field of literary endeavor."

This year's prize is worth $61,382. It's the result of a posthumous gift from Kerr, an Eastern Shore writer who became managing editor of Woman's Home Companion magazine.

Thirty-two seniors at the Eastern Shore college, which dates to 1782, competed for the prize.