Dr. Sellers Named Writer of the Year

The Kansas Authors Club has named Dr. Julie Sellers, associate professor of World and Classical Languages and Cultures at Benedictine College, as its Prose Writer of the Year for 2020. The recognition is awarded to the author who consistently wins across multiple prose categories in the club’s annual writing contest.

“I’m incredibly honored to be recognized with this award,” said Sellers. “The competition–other Kansas authors–is very strong.”

Since 1904, the Kansas Authors Club has offered the opportunity for writers at any level to share experiences and problems unique to their profession. The Writer of the Year award is determined by a points system through the club’s annual writing contest. Each place an author earns in any of the prose categories receives points. The writer with the most points wins.

This year, Sellers took First in the Humor category, Second in Stories for Teens, and had four Honorable Mentions, including one in Flash Fiction and one in Short Story.

In addition to her enjoyment of writing fiction, creative non-fiction and poetry, Sellers has had her academic research published regularly. She has written three books on Dominican music and identity, with her most recent work, The Modern Bachateros: 27 Interviews, released in 2017. She has had articles published on language acquisition and interpreting skills and advocacy in a variety of publications, such as The Language Educator, Proteus and The Wyoming Lawyer.

In 2017, Sellers was named the World Language Teacher of the Year by the Kansas World Language Association. She is the coordinator of the first-year, general education Spanish sequence at Benedictine College and also teaches upper-division courses on Latin American literature, civilization and culture.