Carolyn Chun who received her PhD in mathematics in 2009 under Prof. James Oxley was awarded the 2012 Kenneth Patchen Award for her MFA thesis: "How to break article noun". The award includes a publishing contract.
Yuriy Tarnawsky writes:
"How to Break Article Noun is a carefully crafted work consisting of seven parts, with seven chapters each, which are intricately interwoven to make up for the absence of a plot. ... In addition to influences from film, Chun brings into her novel such diverse elements as pictures, terms and formulas from physics, botanical names, Latin words, poetry, and even an essay; all of this while documenting a touching and psychologically convincing case study of two people growing apart.
How to Break Article Noun was chosen as the winner of the Kenneth Patchen Innovative Fiction Award over a number of worthy candidates for the exceptional craft and originality with which it is written as well as for an insightful and precisely rendered depiction of a crisis in the life of two human beings."