Tanya Schmidt ’08, who is currently a Ph.D. candidate at New York University, was recently named one of the two winners of the 2022 Anne Lake Prescott Graduate Student Conference Paper Prize by the International Spenser Society, an organization devoted to reading and studying the works 16th century English poet Edmund Spenser. According to Schmidt, this award is presented to authors of “distinguished papers on any aspect Spenser’s life and works.”

Schmidt’s advisor, Susanne Wofford, spoke highly her work before she was presented with the award. “It was truly a surreal moment for me when a Spenserian whose scholarship I greatly admire started talking about my dissertation research as ‘witty and far-reaching,’” Schmidt said. “I had to pinch myself!”