Dear Friends of Eva Newman Whitney, Denise Newman, Steven Whitney, CCA MFA in Writing Alumni, and CCA Writing & Lit Alumni, 

 As many of you know, last winter Denise Newman, Steven Whitney, and their daughter Eva Newman Whitney were innocent victims in a catastrophic car accident. Denise and Steven were terribly injured, and their beloved, shining Eva lost her life at age 22. 

Eva graduated from UC Berkeley in 2024 as a Comparative Literature major, and the university’s Arts Research Center created this memorial page: https://arts.berkeley.edu/news/loving-memory-eva-whitney. 

 In honor of Eva's memory at CCA and in keeping with her devotion to writing and art, we are in the midst of creating an annual writing prize in Eva's name at California College of the Arts, where Denise has been an adored faculty member for more than two decades. 

 The prize will be awarded, annually and in perpetuity, through the Academy of American Poets. 

 In order to create this prize and ensure that it will be funded for the first ten years, after which the Academy will fully fund it, we need to raise a minimum of $5000. 

 Please donate if you can. All donations, the large and the small, will help and will go directly to the Academy for the creation of the prize. 

 We are so grateful for your generosity, for your love of Eva and Denise and Steven, and for the blessing that Eva was, and is, to the world. 

-- Donna de la Perrière & Joseph Lease

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For more information about the Academy of American Poets, visit https://poets.org/

For more information about the AAP's requirements and process for creating a new AAP Poetry Prize, visit https://poets.org/academy-american-poets/prizes/university-college-poetry-prizes.

See Eva's video work here: https://www.youtube.com/@eva_whitney.

And if you have other questions, please feel free to leave a message for us here.