Bay College Students Win State Writing Awards

News

Each year, Bay College and all of Michigan’s community colleges participate in the Liberal Arts Network for Development (LAND) Writing Competition. During the fall semester, any current Bay College student was eligible to submit up to three entries in each of three categories: fiction, poetry, and essay. The top two entries in each category advanced to the state competition.

This year, Bay College had two state-level winners among entries from all 28 Michigan community colleges. Sophie Wessel’s “The Illegals” was awarded the first-place prize in poetry. Grace Kraniak’s “Temporary” claimed a third-place prize in the fiction category.

Sophie Wessel, a first-year student from Escanaba, is currently working on an associate in arts degree at Bay College with plans to transfer to Lake Superior State University in the fall of 2020 to pursue a degree in elementary education with a focus in math.

Grace Kraniak, a first-year student from Carney, plans on transferring to Lake Superior State University to complete a degree in psychology.

An awards ceremony and presentation of prizes will be held at the LAND awards luncheon on Friday, February 8, at the annual LAND Conference in Ann Arbor. The award-winning poem and story will be published this spring in Bay College’s annual literary and art magazine Serendipity.