News

Regent College is delighted to congratulate two alumnae writers, Carolyn J. Watts and Naomi Pattison-Williams, on their recognition at the 2024 Word Awards. Presented by The Word Guild, the Word Awards recognize outstanding writing by Canadian Christians working in various genres and formats. 

Naomi Pattison-Williams (GradDipCS ’19, MATS ’22) won in the Best Poetry category for her poem “Kintsugi,” which was published in Regent’s journal, Crux (vol. 59, no.1: Spring 2023). This short poem uses the image of kintsugi—the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with a mixture containing gold or other precious metals—to meditate on our remaking “on the eighth day.”

Carolyn J. Watts (MATS ’17) received the award for Best Non-Fiction Book of the Year (and an Award of Merit in the Life Stories – Biography subcategory) for Risking Rest (hope*books, 2023). 

Carolyn’s award has a special connection to her time at Regent: Risking Rest began its life as Carolyn’s Integrated Project in Art and Theology (IPIAT)—an artistic and academic capstone project completed by students in Regent’s Christianity and the Arts concentration. Supervised by Professor Emeritus Loren Wilkinson, Carolyn presented an early form of her book under the title “Blood in My Birkenstocks: An Obstetrician’s Story of Carrying Jesus.” 

Risking Rest tells the story of Carolyn’s experience as an obstetrician in one of the most under-served locations in the world, the end of her medical career due to chronic illness, and the process of discovering what could come next. Despite her extraordinary circumstances—at one point, she served as the only physician for 150,000 people in rural Afghanistan—Carolyn’s story touches on themes that will be familiar to many readers, ranging from vocational discernment and gender discrimination to physical suffering and psychological trauma. At its heart, however, is the slow journey of learning to trust God’s unconditional love amid uncertainty, limitation, and self-doubt. (Learn more here.)

Regent also congratulates current MDiv student Daniel Melvill Jones, whose “Bearing Fruit in Muddy Swamps: The Phenomenon of J.S. Bach in Japan” (Crux 59, no. 1: Spring 2023) was shortlisted for this year’s Word Award in the Long Feature & News category.

The Word Awards are presented annually by The Word Guild, a professional organization dedicated to growing communities of Christian writers across Canada, in order “to encourage the pursuit of excellence in the art, craft, practice and ministry of writing and help raise the profile of Canadian writers who are Christian.”