Yet another member of the powerhouse stable of writers for the University of St. Thomas-Houston’s MFA in Creative Writing program, Sarah Cortez, has taken top honors in a distinguished competition. Cortez, also the president and founder of Catholic Literary Arts, secured three national writing awards in the National Federation of Press Women’s annual Communications Contest.
Judges honored her as follows:
· First Place – Poetry for “Good Riddance, Clyde”
· First Place - Specialty Article, Arts and Entertainment for “Rock ‘n Roll Artist Paints the Sacred”
· Second Place – Specialty Article, Personal Essay for “The Liturgy of the Mass Seen Through Tolkien’s Lens of Fairy-Story”
Cortez is a student on the poetry track for UST’s MFA in Creative Writing program. She is also teaching COMM 1310, “Writing for the Media,” in the fall. The professional storyteller who has been “writing since I was five” composed two of her recent winning works in fulfillment of MFA assignments.
“The poem was written in the UST MFA Program in Creative Writing,” Cortez said. “As for the personal essay, I wrote it for UST visiting faculty member Joseph Pearce when he taught for the MFA program.”
She wrote the third submission for Joseph Pearce as part of her ongoing bi-monthly column “Art’s Alive” appearing in the St. Austin Review.
The Fascinating Journey Toward Her MFA
Already a published book author and writer of news and feature stories, the prize-winning free-verse poet felt drawn to UST’s MFA by the opportunity to learn from Dr. James Matthew Wilson’s “astounding brilliance in metrical verse, its traditions and complexities.” At the same time, she experienced her own sense of concern due to the restrictions required in writing metrical verse.
Cortez said, “Now I laugh at my initial doubts. Though my poetry remains primarily in the free-verse tradition, I have devoted the past two years to learning the demands of formal poetics. I can attest it has been extraordinarily difficult to change the way my ears and brain process sound, rhythm, speech stress, rhetorical stress, and the measurements involved. Has it influenced my poetry? Through Dr. Wilson’s and Professor Ryan Wilson’s masterful teaching, I do think my poetry is slowly changing for the better. But that jury is still out.”
On the other hand, in terms of her writing of prose, Cortez is unequivocal about the growth she has realized.
“My writing in these arenas has profited from the uncompromising standards of excellence under the MFA’s co-director, Dr. Joshua Hren, Joseph Pearce, and Dr. Wilson.”
Catholicity Enriches Everything Cortez Does
Cortez’s writing and other projects, like helping writers of faith connect with each other and get published, are influenced by her own faith. She calls being Catholic “the greatest joy of my life.”
“My belief and faith are the source of everything I do,” she affirmed.
Among her projects is the Fearless Catholic Literary Writing Camp she founded in 2019. Each June, UST provides the space for a full immersion, fun-filled, one-week experience in creative writing for students in grades three through 12.
More About Her Amazing Accomplishments
Sarah Cortez has been a Texas Commission of the Arts traveling artist. She was a Visiting Scholar for the Center for Mexican American Studies at UH where she specialized in teaching memoir and poetry. She is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters and a Fellow of the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture. She has poems, essays, book reviews, and short stories published and anthologized. Cortez is the winner of the PEN Texas Literary Award and has written and/or edited 14 award-winning books. She has been both a Houston and Texas finalist for poet laureate. She is a contributing editor for Catholic Arts Today for the Benedict XVI Institute of the Archdiocese of San Francisco.
When Cortez is not writing poetry you might find her wrapped up in another love—writing fast-paced crime fiction.