Jennifer Anderson, an assistant professor in the Humanities Division at Lewis-Clark State College, has won the prestigious Missouri Review Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize for creative nonfiction for 2019 with her essay “The Trailer,” according to a news release.
The Missouri Review, founded in 1978, is based at the University of Missouri and holds an annual writing contest for nonfiction, fiction and poetry. Anderson’s work, based on a personal experience, won first place in the nonfiction category. She won $5,000 and will have her essay published in the magazine. She will be honored in Columbia, Mo., in early May, where she will do a reading.
“The Trailer” is based on an experience Anderson had with a homeless woman in Lewiston. Anderson said that about a year after someone abandoned a trailer on her family’s property, a woman moved in without their permission or knowledge. She was living there when Anderson discovered her.
“The essay questions what our responsibility is to others, something I think we all struggle with it at times,” Anderson said in the statement.
Anderson graduated from LCSC in 2000 with a bachelor’s degree in creative writing. She earned a master’s in nonfiction creative writing at the University of Idaho. She has taught full-time at the college for 11 years.
