The Creative Writing Series invites you to come and listen to a reading from 2025 Sparks Prize winner: Ren Phung
The Sparks Prize is annually awarded to a distinguished graduate of the Creative Writing Program as a post-graduation year of residency and writing time, funded by Nicholas Sparks and judged by an external writer. Based on the quality of writing and the likelihood that the submission will be published or will be developed into a publishable book.
2025 Sparks Prize Judge Jenny Boully selected Phung's Museum of Explosions as the winning entry. Boully writes:
"Museum of Explosions excites me with its latent potential to explode. I see so much grit and friction and spark in the prose, so many blasts of the imagination, uncharted paths in form and dimensions. The framework for a successful take-off is all embedded in this sampling, and I believe that time to live closely within this project will only engender unexplored worlds of form and content and their endless orbiting. Keep seeking the whirls of this world."