The Castagna-Campion Prize is awarded to a UI Center for the Book MFA student in the final year of the program. The endowed gift honors book arts students who shine through the range of their work at the UI. The selected student excels according to the three following criteria:

• Artistic excellence: the recipient balances craft and expression in distinctive ways that highlight the strengths of a book arts education.
• Progress and development: the recipient shows growth over the three-year process of the MFA, deepening or broadening their work.
• Participation and contribution: the recipient is outward-facing in terms of peer student growth and contributions to the community, reflected in classroom participation, workshop generosity, or public outreach and professional engagement.

The selection committee consists of UICB faculty. The honor comes with a monetary award of up to $1,000.

About JoAnn Castagna & Dan Campion

JoAnn and Dan shared a love for poetry—in fact, they met when JoAnn published some of Dan’s poems in the late 1970s as they were both active in the Chicago poetry scene. Throughout her life, JoAnn received many accolades for her artistic and professional work, including a Poets of America Award, an Outstanding Teaching Award, and a fellowship to the American Antiquarian Society. When JoAnn worked as the Assistant to the Dean in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, she helped establish and support the Center for the Book at its very beginning.

Dan taught at the University of Iowa, was an editor for the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Follett Publishing Company, and ACT. Dan wrote Peter De Vries and Surrealism (Bucknell University Press) and co-edited with Ed Folsom and Jim Perlman Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song (Holy Cow! Press). Dan is the author of three books of poems: Calypso (Syncline Press), A Playbill for Sunset (Ice Cube Press), and The Mirror Test (MadHat Press).

JoAnn and Dan both earned PhDs at the University of Iowa and have inspired many through their work, writing, and abiding support of others.

Past prize recipients: 
2024 - Jamie Capps 
2023 - Luke Allan 
2022 - Sara Rieger 
2021 - María Carolina Ceballos  
2020 - India Johnson 
2019 - Sonia Farmer 
2018 - Elise Hochhalter 
2017 - Ian Huebert