Concluding an inaugural year full of outstanding undergraduate student writing supported by the M. Garren Tinney Memorial Fund, The Writing Program in the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts (HFA) at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) is pleased to announce the winners of the 2023-2024 M. Garren Tinney Writing Awards. Earlier in the year, three students received M. Garren Tinney Writing Fellowships ($3,000 each for a major writing project) and two received M. Garren Tinney Travel Awards ($1,150 each for writing-related travel). While this Fund is administered by The Writing Program, the M. Garren Tinney Writing Awards are managed and selected by three separate departments/programs: The Writing Program, the Department of English, and the Writing & Literature Program at the College of Creative Studies (CCS). Award winners received a $500 cash prize.
The M. Garren Tinney Writing Award administered by the Writing Program was selected from faculty nominations for outstanding pieces created in a Writing Program course.
Winner: Yelena Tao ’25 (L&S Cell and Developmental Biology)
Winning entry: “我爱你” & Other Expressions of Love”
Yelena wrote this winning entry in Professor Vickie Vertiz’s Writing 105C class. Per Vertiz, “Yelena's essay was a brilliant example of multilingual work that does not explain itself but asks the reader to meet the story where it is, centering the Chinese household and its matriarchal storyline around sewing, feminism, and the complications of familial relationships. Yelena's writing echoed the braided essay form as well as the photo image essay, two forms I teach in Writing 105C, and both were executed beautifully. With regards to its connection to [M. Garren] Tinney, the work, a study ‘of the human condition,’ covers family ties and the early writings of a wonderful creative writer.”
The M. Garren Tinney Writing Award administered by the Department of English focused on creative writing and was open to undergraduates in their third and fourth years of study at UCSB.
Winner: Min Seo Riu ‘25 (L&S English)
Winning entry: “Limberlost”
A take on a selkie story under the backdrop of coming to a university like UCSB, Min Seo explains, “I wrote it while thinking about some of the conversations I had with my roommate about students who never really feel like they belong on campus, despite the beautiful geography and the many friendly people here. I thought that this overlapped with the genre of the selkie story, and from there I expanded, using the second-person perspective. I wrote it for Professor Melody Jue's Science Fiction Short Story course.” Min Seo has been an op-ed writer for the UCSB Daily Nexus, a transcription intern for the Ballitore Project, and a participant in Arnhold Research Fellowship during which she published a piece in Emergence titled: "Insane Girl Literature: Modern Femininity in Post-Reagan, Post-9/11 Literature."
Honorable mention: Nailah Rauf ‘25 (L&S English)
Entry: “Affidavit #3”
This is a stage play depicting two different portrayals of the same real-life murder of Bobby Hutton with simultaneously staged versions of a character reflecting different accounts of the same events. The two distinct narratives are based on the contrasting reports of the events of that night: one based on the events as described in Eldridge Cleaver's "Affidavit #2" and the other based on the descriptions provided by Kathleen Cleaver years later. The narrative gets increasingly complex as the play continues, given the chaotic nature of the events performed and the performers are, at times, just as disoriented as the audience. Nailah’s winning entry was an excerpt from a play written for English 176BC: Performance of Literature, Black California that was taught by Dr. Stephanie Batiste.
The M. Garren Tinney Writing Award administered by CCS Writing & Literature program focused on creative nonfiction and was open to all UCSB undergraduate students.
Winner: Maya Salem ‘24 (CCS Writing & Literature; L&S Communication)
Winning entry: “Ottolenghi Beans”
Ellen O’Connell Whittet ’08 (CCS Literature), a lecturer at the Writing Program and CCS W&L, judged the submissions and commented on the winning entry, “I admire its lyricism, the connection between father and daughter across continents, decades, and language, and the search for identity through food and native tongue. It's gentle yet muscular writing, full of discovery and love.”
In loving memory of Michael “Garren” Tinney ‘01 (L&S English), his mother, Donna “Dee Dee” Tinney, established the M. Garren Tinney Memorial Fund at UCSB in June 2023 to honor the memory of her son and his interest in and passion for writing. The Fund provides numerous opportunities, now and into the future, for UCSB undergraduate students committed to writing and who have an interest in pursuing writing-related careers. The Fund supports the M. Garren Tinney Writing Fellows, M. Garren Tinney Writing Awards, and the M. Garren Tinney Travel Awards.
Garren came from Oklahoma City to UCSB as an English major and continued his studies at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Garren passed away on December 7, 2019. Garren valued free speech, education, and above all else, using the written word as a means to communicate the many insights he garnered over 41 years as a survivor of grief and student of the human condition. Over the course of his short life, Garren prided himself on his multifaceted occupational pursuits. He worked in politics in Washington, D.C., entertainment in Los Angeles, journalism and public relations in Manhattan, New York, and finally achieved his lifelong dream of becoming a writer in Pasadena, California, completing dozens of short stories, novellas, and novels.
The Writing Program will start to accept applications in Fall 2024 for the second annual M. Garren Tinney Writing Fellowships, followed by the M. Garren Tinney Travel Awards. The M. Garren Tinney Writing Awards will take place in Spring 2025.