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ľ�ϸ���Ӱ�� College Utrecht’s Creative Writing teacher Mia You is one of this year’s winners of the Crone Stipendium for her new poetry collection.

Mia You is the first English-language writer , an award by the City of Utrecht for emerging talented writers living in Utrecht.

Mia, who also teaches English literature at ľ�ϸ���Ӱ�� Utrecht, has followed a true Liberal Arts and Sciences path, as an academic and a poet. She studied English literature at Stanford ľ�ϸ���Ӱ��, East Asian Studies at Harvard, and did her PhD in English at Stanford.

It was motherhood that made her turn to poetry. “During my dissertation writing, I became a mother, and that changed entirely the way I think and work. I realized that I need to work in whatever pockets of time I have, even if it is for 15 minutes at a time.”

The opening lines of her poem  would seem to apply to herself as well: “Every day is a festival. | Every day is a routine.”

“As an immigrant, I've been very eager to belong to a local community of writers, and I have tried my best to meet, learn about and read Dutch writers. This prize signifies to me the hope that I am welcome here,” Mia says. “I am really lucky to have a permanent job that allows me to teach both literature and creative writing courses. It is a dream for a poet-scholar like me.”

Mia You’s first full-length poetry book, , was published in 2016. She will use the Crone Stipend to fund her second poetry book, Festival, which will be published both in English and Dutch (in translation by Kim Schoof and published by , an Utrecht-based feminist literary press).