An ISU English professor recently received a Faulkner award for a non-fiction essay that was conceptualized during a visit to Alaska.

Sheryl St Germain, associate professor of English, said the Faulkner award is given annually by writers to honor their peers.

She said the award, given to writers of fiction, poetry and non-fiction, is named after William Faulkner, a famous southern non-fiction writer from New Orleans.

“There’s a group of writers in New Orleans that has a conference every year where they announce winners of the Faulkner award,” she said.

St Germain said she received the award for an essay entitled “To Drink a Glacier.”

“I was invited to the conference in September of 1999 and was invited to read my essay, which is partly about a trip I took to Alaska four summers ago,” she said. “I did some hiking and also climbed to the top of a glacier on the trip, which is where the idea for the essay came from.”

St Germain said it was very exciting to be recognized for her work. “Winning the award was great,” she said. “I have five books of poetry out and have received some awards for them, but non-fiction was a new genre for me. This was also the first time I’d received an award for non-fiction, so it was very exciting,” she said.

Charles Kostelnick, professor and chairman of English, said the department was very pleased to see St Germain receive an award.

“We’re always very proud of our faculty when they win awards,” he said.

The award-winning essay will also be part of a book she is currently writing called “Bodies of Water,” which will be published by the University of Utah Press in 2002, St Germain said.

“The book will also contain a lot of information about Louisiana, which is where I was born and raised,” she said.

St Germain said her book will focus on how characteristics of states can shape the nature of people living in them.

“It’s about how the geography of Louisiana affected the culture of the state,” she said. “While on my trip, I realized that Alaska has a landscape that’s not unlike Louisiana’s. That was very interesting to me. Both states have large fishing communities, swamplands, and oil is very important in both states. Both of these states also think of themselves as being different from the rest of the United States.”

St Germain said she has been working on “Bodies of Water” for about six years. “I have a research release here at Iowa State,” she said. “I teach two courses per term, because I was actually hired here as a creative writer and am actually expected to write.”