Simon's Rock faculty members receive literary awards

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GREAT BARRINGTON - Two faculty members in literature, Brendan Mathews and Peter Filkins, have recently been awarded prizes for their work, each published in the Southwest Review. The Southwest Review is the third oldest continuously published quarterly literary journal in published in the country.
 
Peter Filkins received the 2007 Elizabeth Matchett Stover Award for his poem “Vermeer.” Filkins teaches poetry and literature at Simon’s Rock. His translations, poetry, and critiques have been published by many journals, such as The New Republic, The American Scholar, New Criterion, Paris Review, Agni, American Poetry Review, Partisan Review, The Iowa Review, The Literary Review, Southwest Review, Verse, TriQuarterly, Poetry, The Massachusetts Review, Poetry Criticism, Contemporary Literary Criticism, USA Today, The World & I, the Los Angeles Times Book Review, and The New York Times Book Review.
 
Brendan Mathews was awarded the 2007 McGinnis-Ritchie Award for Fiction for his short story entitled "Concerning the So-Called One and Only God, as Told by Anu the All-Seeing Lord of the World-Covering Sky Vault." He recently won another award as well, The Virginia Quarterly Review’s Emily Clark Balch Prize for Short Story for the story, “Dunn & Sons,” which was published in last summer’s issue of The Virginia Quarterly Review. Mathews teaches creative writing and fiction at Simon’s Rock, and his stories have appeared in The Southern Review, TriQuarterly, Glimmer Train Stories, and others.
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Bianchi-Barbarotta Foundation Holds Awards Banquet

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PITTSFIELD, Mass. -- The Bianchi-Barbarotta Foundation Friday honored outstanding contributors to the Berkshire County sports scene at its third annual Awards Dinner at the Polish Falcon Club.
 
The foundation supports youth sports throughout the county each year.
 
In 2025-26, those donations totaled more than $30,000 to groups ranging from youth football and cheerleading programs, Pittsfield Little League, Northern Berkshire Softball and the Pittsfield Boys and Girls Club Recreation Therapy Program, to name a few.
 
Funds raised by the foundation also go to support its annual Vera Barborotta Memorial Sportsman Scholarship, which this year went to Lee High School graduate Joey Abderhalden and Taconic grad Madeline Harrington.
 
Two other recently graduated high school standout athletes were recognized as winners of the Al Bianchi Memorial Athletes of the Year: Madison McCarthy and Cooper Calvert, both of Wahconah Regional High School.
 
Pittsfield High School girls basketball coach Kristy Conyers and Hoosac Valley boys basketball coach Matt Larabee received the foundation's Coach of the Year Awards.
 
John Castonguay received the Bianchi-Barbarotta Foundation Living Legend Award. A.J. Ziter took home the Connie Bianchi Memorial Award of Merit. And Mark Moulton rounded out the honorees with the foundation's Volunteer of the Year Award.
 
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