QCC Adjunct Nominated for Esteemed Pushcart Prize

Quinsigamond Community College adjunct faculty member Chryssa Meleti has been nominated for the prestigious Pushcart Prize in the category of Best American Poetry 2020. Ms. Meleti was nominated by the American Aesthetic Journal, which published her poem, "Romel Forks." The Pushcart Prize is an American literary prize published by Pushcart Press that honors the best published poetry, short stories, essays, memoirs or stand-alone novel excerpts over the previous year, from little magazine and small book press editors throughout the world.

Ms. Meleti, who is originally from Greece, came to the U.S. in 2016 and quickly became a permanent citizen. She writes in both English and Greek and has been published in American, Greek and Finnish literary magazines. She’s had a novel, “Lydius” published in Melbourne, Australia and participated as an author in two collective works: “Fugue,” a collection of contemporary short stories, published in London, England and “Fortune Cookies II, an Anthology of the New Wave of Greek Writers,” published in Athens, Greece.

“I have been writing poetry for 10 years now. I mostly write fiction. I started writing fiction -with pauses and breaks- since when I was a kid,” she said. “I prefer free verse; I think that free verse offers more expressive autonomy to a poet as it has no rules. However, it still needs an inner sense of rhythm otherwise it isn’t poetry. I believe that the inner tune of language is what defines the good free verse poems.”

Ms. Meleti has been teaching at QCC since 2019 as an adjunct instructor, teaching French and ESOL.

“I love my students and I really enjoy teaching here. The students are amazing, such great personalities and such sensitive and responsible human beings. Their positive response to my teaching gives me strength and motivation to become better by trying constantly to inspire them as much as they inspire me,” she said.

 It was during a break from a meeting at the College that she found out the exciting news of her nomination.

“I was so excited that I had to try really hard to stay focused on the meeting after that,” she said.  “It’s really an honor and I have to thank Thomas F. Jones (editor of The American Aesthetic; writer and essayist  for the Los Angeles Times and San Francisco Chronicle) for nominating me. I respect his work tremendously.”

Pushcart Prize winners will be announced in Spring 2020.