Hair Trigger, the Fiction Writing department’s annual anthology of student writing, has once again received a Gold Crown Award from the Columbia University Scholastic Press Association, the journal’s fourth consecutive Gold Crown. Hair Trigger has won 23 major awards in national competitions, and has never failed to place in any year that it has been eligible.

Many Fiction Writing students won individual awards as well, including first-place awards in all three major categories: Stephanie Shaw for “Afterbirth” in the Experimental Fiction category; Chelsea Laine Wells for “The Heart of God” in the Traditional Fiction category; and J.S. Gordon for “When Thinking About Corners” in the Essays category. Fictionary, the Fiction Writing department’s semiannual magazine, won a silver medal in the Specialty Magazine category.

It’s not just Columbia’s fiction writers who are winning awards—our journalists are, too. For the second year in a row, the Columbia Chroniclehttp://columbiachronicle.com/ was named the state’s top student newspaper in its category (nondaily newspaper with a school population of more than 4,000). The General Excellence award was one of more than a dozen honors the Chronicle won at the 2009 Illinois College Press Association convention competition. Individuals who contribute to the Chronicle also won first-place awards for In-House Promotional Ad (Konrad Biegaj), Advertising Campaign (Emilia Klimiuk), Advertisement Less Than Full Page (Ben Andis and Matthew Mielke), Entertainment Supplement (Jessica Galliart), and Sports Feature Story (Matt Fagerholm).