Huntley High grad earns poetry award for first book

For years, writer Emily Skaja struggled to hone her craft.

She began writing poems at 17 with much of her work stemming from feelings of loneliness and being misunderstood as a teenager.

"They were terrible, awful, highly dramatic, overwrought poems about my feelings," said Skaja, 33, a 2002 Huntley High School graduate.

After numerous failures, her first manuscript, "Brute," will be published by Graywolf Press next April. It's a collection of 38 poems, which has earned Skaja the 2018 Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets.

"It took me five years to write it," said Skaja, who is pursuing a doctorate in creative writing and poetry at the University of Cincinnati. "(For) a long time I wasn't trying to publish anything because I wasn't proud of my writing. I was expecting it to be rejected for years and to maybe win something one day."

All but two of the poems in Skaja's manuscript have been published before in literary magazines. They explore her personal journey of self-discovery after experiencing trauma from an abusive relationship. Skaja said her work is influenced by her study of feminism and in sync with the current discourse about sexual harassment spurred on by the #MeToo movement.

"Gradually, it became clear lots of women share a history like this ... the poems partially process the trauma of that experience, and partially work as an effort to set the record straight, to take back ownership of the story," she said.

Skaja credited two of her Huntley Community School District 158 teachers and her college professors for challenging and encouraging her to pursue writing.

She developed a passion for it as an undergraduate at Millikin University in Decatur, and later earned two masters' degrees in creative writing from Temple University in Philadelphia and Purdue University in Indiana.

While at Purdue, Skaja began publishing her work. She since has received The Russell Prize for emerging poets, the Gulf Coast Poetry Prize, an Academy of American Poets College Prize, an Association of Writers and Writing Programs Intro Award, and a Taft Research Fellowship from the University of Cincinnati.

As part of the Walt Whitman Award, Skaja receives a $5,000 cash prize and a six-week, expenses-paid writing residency with other artists in May 2019 at the Civitella Ranieri Center castle in Italy's Umbria region. Copies of Skaja's published book also will be sent to the thousands of academy members.

"It's a really big deal," Skaja said. "If you are a poet, this is one of the biggest prizes that exists. I'm very excited. I've never been to Italy."