The following are some of the Holden Scholars, their professional achievements, their publications, and the academic and literary careers that have opened up to them. The twelve scholarships awarded to date have included African-American, Asian-American, and Hispanic students.

A.VAN JORDAN has published three books of poetry: Rise, which won the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Award and was selected for the Book of the Month Club from the Academy of American Poets; M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A, which won an Anisfield-Wolf Award and was listed as one of the Best Books of 2005 by The London Times (TLS); and Quantum Lyrics. His recognitions include a Pushcart Prize, a Whiting Writers Award, and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship.

VYVYANE LOH, writer, physician, and dancer/choreographer, has published Breaking the Tongue, an historical novel set in Singapore during WWII. Picked by the New York Public Library as one of the year’s “Books to Remember,” the novel was a finalist for the Impac Prize, and won her the Prix de Rome and a Bunting Fellowship, as well as a contract for her second novel (in progress).

VEN BEGAMUDRE has published seven books of fiction, including short stories—A Planet of Eccentrics, which received the F.G. Bressani Literary Prize for Prose; a novel--Van de Graaff Days, a finalist for two major Canadian awards; a memoir; a movie script; and a book of poems—The Lightness which is Our World, Seen from Afar. He co-edited Out of Place, stories and poems by and about those who have lost their place and language of origin.

RODNEY JACK has published his poetry widely, including in Poetry, which awarded him the prestigious Eunice Tietjens Memorial Prize. He has been a Peter Mayer Scholar at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and is a grantee of the PEN American Center.

VICTORIA CHANG won the Crab Orchard Review Award for her first book of poetry, Circle. Her second collection Salvinia Molesta was published in 2008 as part of the VQR Poetry Series. The editor of Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation, her poems appear in leading literary magazines and in Best American Poetry 2005. She is currently in the Ph.D. program in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Southern California.

FRED ARROYO went on to earn a Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, is widely published in journals, is working on a novel, and is an Assistant Professor of English at Saint Louis University.