A capacity crowd gathered to congratulate the winners of the USC Information Services Division’s first Wonderland Award, announced at a reception in Doheny Library April 14.

Creative writing undergraduate Charles Mallison and theatrical design major Lauren Tyler shared the $1,500 first prize for their richly illustrated novella “Sasha’s Adventures Underground.”

Paolo Matteucci and Sabrina Ovan – both comparative literature doctoral candidates – split the second place $1,000 award for the essay “Evidence of Alice’s Escape”; and theater major Sola Aiyegbusi was recognized with third place and $500 for his original play “Down the Smoking Barrels of Wonderland.”

The Wonderland Award is a newly created multidisciplinary competition that encourages interest, new scholarship and creative work related to Lewis Carroll, the English logician, mathematician, photographer and nonsense poet who is best remembered for “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” (1865) and its sequel, “Through the Looking Glass” (1871).

More than 30 entries – judged on their combination of scholarly research and creativity – included essays, performance pieces, art objects, digital compositions/DVDs and filmed works.

“What anyone can recognize is the remarkable and heart-expanding range, subtlety and depth of these submissions and the minds and hearts from which they spring,” professor James Kincaid, head of the judging committee, said of the submissions.

“Lewis Carroll has found a home in the powerful imaginations of so many of our students, and the results have been astounding,” he said.

The goal of the award is to promote the use of the G. Edward Cassady and Margaret Elizabeth Cassady Lewis Carroll Collection. The Wonderland Award is made possible through a gift from Linda Parker.

More information on the Carroll Collection can be found at http://www.usc.edu/uscnews/stories/10090.html.