The 2006 winners of the annual Professor Curtis and Billie Belcher Owens Literary Prize have been announced at Tusculum College by the Department of English.

The three winners will each receive $1,000 awards. Three honorable mention awards were also given, those awards being $300.

Jacki Ewing, of Rogersville won in the poetry category for four poems: "Afrikaan," "Penance," "Coal Bucket Cakes," and "Appalachian Winter."

Anup Kaphle, a Greeneville resident who is a native of Nepal, won in the fiction category for his short story "Aama's Rice Pudding." He also won honorable mention in poetry for his poem "Morning on the Ganges."

Yvonne Daniel of Chattanooga won in the creative nonfiction category for her memoir piece "Flying with the Eagles." She also won honorable mention for her poem "Censored Snapshots."

A third honorable mention winner was Greeneville's Eliza Land for two poems, "Signs of Honesty" and "Bullet Casings."

The 2006 winning poems, fiction, and memoir piece will be published in the April supplement of The Pioneer Frontier, Tusculum College's student newspaper.

The Owens literary prize was established in 1995 by Professor Curtis Owens, a member of the class of 1928, and his wife, Billie, of Richmond Hill, New York. While a Tusculum College student Curtis Owens played football, debated, won a special award for philosophy, two awards for poetry and wrote the class poem for the 1928 annual. During his senior year, he wrote a play that was presented as part of the commencement.

"This prize serves to recognize the Owens' long standing commitment to Tusculum College by providing for an annual campus-wide competition among students who show exceptional ability in creative writing," said Dr. Taimi Olsen, chair of the Department of English.