Rion Amilcar Scott Wins the Towson University Prize for Literature

Rion Amilcar Scott, who teaches creative writing at the University of Maryland, College Park, has been selected as the winner of the Towson University Prize for Literature.

Established in 1979 with a grant from Alice and Franklin Cooley, the Towson University Prize for Literature is awarded annually for a single book or book-length manuscript of fiction, poetry, drama, or imaginative nonfiction. The prize is granted on the basis of literary and aesthetic excellence as determined by a panel of distinguished judges appointed by the university.

Scott was honored for his short story collection The World Doesn’t Require You (Liveright, 2019). The book is a follow-up to his 2016 award-winning debut collection Insurrections (University Press of Kentucky, 2016). The collections of stories tell the tales of the residents of the fictional community of Cross River, Maryland, a largely Black settlement founded in 1807 after the only successful slave revolt in the United States.

A native of Silver Spring, Maryland, Scott received a mater of fine arts degree from George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.

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