Call It Writers' Block What does Joseph J. Ellis, Ford Foundation Professor of History, who this week won the Pulitzer Prize for Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation, have in common with Academy Award-winning novelist John Irving and Ben L. Reid, another Pulitzer winner? Back in 1977, all three were teaching at MHC, with offices in a short corridor on the ground floor of Torrey Hall. Ellis, who began teaching at the College in 1972, was in D9 Torrey, just across the hall from Reid, a professor of English, in D4 Torrey. Reid had won the 1969 Pulitzer Prize in Biography for The Man From New York: John Quinn and His Friends. Next door to Reid in D5 Torrey was fellow English professor Irving, who in 1978 would publish The World According to Garp. The film adaptation of Irving's 1985 book, The Cider House Rules, would later win the author an Academy Award. The passage of time has not been able to completely erase their mark on the building. On a painted wooden directory in the corridor, the remnants of the scratched-out names of Ellis, Irving, and Reid can still be found— if you look closely enough.

She's a Poet, and They Know It She did not win, but Kathryn Foran '02, MHC's representative in the seventy-eighth annual Kathryn Irene Glascock Intercollegiate Poetry Competition, came away from last week's contest with a clearer understanding of why she writes poems. "I think I know why I write, and it's for my own enjoyment," says Foran. She says she found that she, like the other contestants, writes "to appreciate the things that happen to me that otherwise might slip by unnoticed." "The feedback from the poet judges was such an incredible thing to get," Foran adds. The judges in the contest—poets April Bernard, John Peck, and Alastair Reid—awarded first place to Emma Christiansen of Bryn Mawr College, with second place going to Meghan Tally of Emory University. Also competing were representatives of Amherst College, Johns Hopkins University, and Smith College. Foran says she will "take the comments of the judges and go from there." She is looking forward to the fall, when she plans to take an independent study with MHC's Mary Jo Salter, Emily Dickinson lecturer in the Humanities and a former Glascock contestant herself. Salter finished second in the 1976 competition.

In Memoriam
William Hetherington Durfee, who was a professor of mathematics at the College from 1955 to 1980, died April 18 at the age of eighty-six. He leaves his wife of sixty years, the former Sylvia Brooks Taylor, three sons, a daughter, and six grandchildren. A memorial service will be held May 5 at 11 am in Abbey Chapel. Memorial contributions may be made to the College's general scholarship fund.

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