George Mason High School alumna Liana Quill Camper-Barry, 23, had her first poetry collection, Fifty Poems, published as a result of her winning the 2010 Mississippi Review Poetry Series contest.
George Mason High School alumna Liana Quill Camper-Barry, 23, had her first poetry collection, Fifty Poems, published as a result of her winning the 2010 Mississippi Review Poetry Series contest.
Growing up in Falls Church, Camper-Barry attended Mount Daniel and Thomas Jefferson Elementary Schools, graduating from GMHS in 2005. She credits a number of her teachers for “nurturing her interest in creative writing, particularly Andy Fogle.” Fogle previously taught at GMHS, from whom Camper-Barry got a new appreciation for poetry.
Camper-Barry’s mom, Anne Camper, also of Falls Church, recalled the moment her daughter received the call telling her she’d won.
“She had thought so little of her chance of even placing – much less winning – that it had never occurred to her to mention she had submitted an entry,” said Camper, who quickly learned what Camper-Barry’s excitement was about.
As one of three winners, Camper-Barry took home $1,000. This is the first time the spring 2009 Hollins University graduate has been published. Not only is she among the youngest alumni in the school’s 160-year history to have a book published, but Camper-Barry is also the youngest Poetry Series winner. This year’s other two winners were Martha Greenwald and Christopher Salerno.
Contest judge and award-winning poet Dara Wier called Camper-Barry’s poems “lucid, succinct, indirect, provocative,” going on to say Fifty Poems “offers [readers] 50 chances to think not so much of what a poem’s words say but of what poetry’s essential presence proposes and lets us have.”
“Liana has always been extremely articulate. I remember discussing the existence of God with her when she was barely three,” said Camper, who added that her daughter “didn’t seem to like writing” until she started attending GMHS. There, Camper said she began writing essays that were “delightful, insightful or both.”
Camper-Barry, who writes under the name Liana Quill, currently teaches and writes in Prague. Fifteen poems from Fifty will also be published in the next issue of Blackbird, an on-line journal of literature and the arts.
The Mississippi Review is published quarterly online and twice a year in print by The Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi.
