Dr. Courtney Huse Wika, professor of English at Black Hills State University, was
recently awarded the 2025 Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award from Poets & Writers,
one of the nation’s largest non-profit organizations for writers, for her submission
“Pioneer Species,” an excerpt from her collection of nature poems, “Small Things.”
Established in 1984, this prestigious award aims to introduce promising writers to the New York City literary community and connect them with a network for professional advancement. Past winners have gone on to publish books, obtain fellowships or teaching positions, and lay the groundwork for their writing careers. Each year, one poet and fiction writer is selected, and this year, writers from North Dakota and South Dakota were invited to apply.
As part of the award, Poets & Writers flew Huse Wika to New York City this fall to experience the heart of the nation's literary community and to meet with agents, publishers, and fellow poets. “The conversations were generous and candid about the trials of writing, the sustaining power of a literary community, and the shifting landscape of contemporary poetry,” said Huse Wika.
This past summer, Huse Wika also completed “Small Things,” which she is currently seeking to publish. The collection explores chronic illness and pain using birds and nature as sites of meditation. The project was supported almost entirely by College, Provost, and SEED grants from BHSU to conduct fieldwork on birds and their behavior. Huse Wika said she is fascinated by both the brutal and beautiful nature of birds; this juxtaposition makes them ideal subjects through which to study the body’s binaries: healthy/ill, whole/fragmented, life/death, healing/trauma.
“In ‘Small Things,’ I wanted to trace how beauty and violence coexist in nature and in our own bodies,” said Huse Wika. “It asks many questions: what can we understand about the anatomy of collapse? What does it mean to live in a body that can’t be fixed? What can nature teach us about pain or grief? At what point, if any, do either of these responses become transformative? This recognition from Poets & Writers reminds me that poetry’s work—to make meaning of what’s both brutal and tender—remains vital.”
The award includes a one-month residency at the Jentel Artist Residency in Banner, Wyoming, which Huse Wika hopes to complete in the spring of 2027.