Centenary College’s 2026 John William Corrington Award for Literary Excellence recipient is poet Richie Hofmann for his collection “The Bronze Arms.” The award is in its 36th year and is given to “an established writer who has earned the critical esteem of readers who distinguish artistic accomplishment from commercial success" who is chosen by Centenary’s English department.
The Corrington Award is named after Centenary alumnus 1956 Bill Corrington. He was an English professor, attorney, and head writer for multiple television shows. Corrington also published four novels, two short stories, and three collections of short stories. He co-edited a two-volume anthology of Southern Writing in the Sixties and is credited with bringing the names of many young Southern writers into the public sphere, making clear why he was the one chosen when naming the award.
The Centenary English department gets together every year to nominate, normally previously published but up-and-coming, authors and their recent works. While it ultimately is the department that decides, they often send out a survey to ask for student opinions on who they would like to see on campus receiving the award.
Though Centenary might not be able to get the specific requests to come to campus, they try to look at the common denominators of the answers and find someone that is similar to what the students had expressed interest in. Dr. Rachel Johnson, one of the event coordinators, says that if they notice a "hunger for representation,” whether it be female authors, authors of color, or queer authors, in the books students have nominated, then they will “look for someone who has kinship with that person.”
The event is required for all first-year students taking a TREK 115 class and encouraged for all other students on campus. TREK students are also required to read the chosen text of the award winner each year, as it is integrated into the class. Although the event used to be mostly directed towards Centenary’s English students, the use of the text within the first-year coursework connects the students to the award recipient and a new work. The course is not a literature course, so students are not asked to write about the work. English professor Dr. Bellee Jones-Pierce says they are asked to try and connect with it and “to write with it, or in this spirit of it.”
After COVID, Jones-Pierce was named the Director of the First Year Program, and the format of the first-year TREK course was changed from two semesters to one, adding argument and research into the first semester, when it was normally only in the second semester. This change provided the opportunity for the award winner's work to be integrated into the course in a more thorough and personal way, with this year’s Corrington essay prompt being "Researching the Personal” through myths, a theme explored in Hofmann’s “The Bronze Arms.” The Corrington essay prompt changes from year to year, but they give students the chance to, as Jones-Pierce says, “write really deeply into themselves and practice research skills” in an interdisciplinary way.
The Corrington Award works to be not only an award that an author receives but also an experience for students on campus. Johnson says that when students read the book from the recipient, they can then connect with them better in person, and their writing can be "demystified" into something that was formed through much trial and error, not just having appeared on the page. Jones-Pierce says they want to extend the time that the author spends on campus so that they have more time for student interaction and will be introduced to “this community that I care about and learners who I want to enrich.”
Students are also involved in the ceremony as music students will compose a piece to be performed, an art student will design the ceremony program, and there will be poetry readings done by students. The ceremony is designed this way in order to encourage connection between students and the recipient. Hofmann is particularly excited to “participate in lectures, readings, class visits, creative workshops, and many informal chats around campus.”
Hofmann will give a reading from his book and receive his award in a ceremony starting at 5 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 25, at the Marjorie Lyons Playhouse. He says, “In difficult or frustrating times, I am inspired by the creativity and ideas of students I meet. If I can have any part in showing them a way forward in poetry, as readers and writers, I feel like I’m living my purpose.”