Emory seniors Ilo Elder and Danielle Sherman are the recipients of the 2025 Louis B. Sudler Prize in the Arts, recognizing their accomplishments and skill in the creative and performing arts.
The Sudler Prize, given annually at Emory and a select group of colleges across the nation, is accompanied by a $6,000 award and is bestowed at the Emory College Honors Program each Commencement.
Ilo Elder
Hailing from Brooklyn, New York, Ilo Elder is not only a consistent presence in Emory’s dance scene, but also an accomplished performer, teacher and choreographer.
“Being a Sudler recipient was a dream for the latter half of my college career,” Elder states. As an “artivist” (artist and activist), Elder’s studies and artistic practices have focused on embodied liberation within Afro-diasporic forms such as West-African and Afro-Caribbean dance.
Looking back on their Emory career, Elder highlights the impact of their mentor, Julio Medina, assistant professor of dance and movement studies and Emory College alum. “My dear mentor, Julio Medina, is also a Sudler honoree and has played a significant role in my artistic development and success,” says Elder. “And so, this achievement feels like a passing of the torch and a huge affirmation of the impact and importance of my artistry.”
“Ilo is a magnetic performer, drawing in the audience with his fierce and gentle presence,” says Medina. “Ilo moves with grace, power, and superb articulation, infecting other dancers around them with energy so they may move with Ilo's elegance.”
Throughout their time at Emory, Elder developed a proficiency and passion for house dance, a style originated by Black and Brown queer dancers in the 1970s.
“In his first year, Ilo was in one of my choreographies that focused on house dance, and since then, Ilo has devoted time to developing their skills in that form,” says Medina.
Elder incorporated this passion for house dance into their honors thesis project, titled “Queer B/being.” The term, which they coined during the research process, references, “the radical assertion of possibility through embodied practice.”
Alongside Elder’s performance work, they are a teaching assistant for Emory’s beginner, intermediate and advanced hip-hop classes. Elder also served as a mentor at the Bates Dance Festival and as a choreography assistant intern in “Deeply Rooted: Fertile Ground,” a dance production in Chicago. Ilo has also been featured in arts publications such as ArtsATL and Dance Magazine.
After graduation, Elder plans to continue teaching hip-hop in Atlanta, start community House Dance classes, and expand their “artivism.”
Danielle Sherman
Danielle Sherman is the creative writing department’s first fiction writer to be nominated for the Sudler Prize.
“I’m immensely honored to receive the Sudler Prize,” says Sherman. “Being selected as Creative Writing’s nominee was itself a huge honor, because I’m surrounded by such talented peers in the program.”
A longtime storyteller, Sherman first dipped her toes in creative writing after her sophomore year of high school, when she attended a creative writing summer program. After submitting a novella to the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards — winning National Gold Key in the process — Sherman knew she wanted to pursue a creative writing degree.
When it came time to choose a university, she headed to Emory thanks to its renowned creative writing program.
“Here at Emory, the workload was demanding, the professor’s expectations were high and the workshops were brutally honest — I loved it,” she says.
Tiphanie Yanique, professor of English and creative writing, served as a mentor for Sherman throughout her time at Emory. Sherman took Yanique’s Introduction to Fiction course in her first year, and Yanique would eventually become her thesis advisor.
“Even now, four years later, I remember the first story she wrote in my class,” says Yanique. “It was already a piece I could imagine in a reputable literary journal.” Throughout her time at Emory, Sherman’s work has been featured in literary journals across the country, including the North American Review and the Los Angeles Review.
Yanique notes Sherman’s commitment to utilizing research in her writing process, as well as her multidisciplinary approach to wordcraft, stating, “[Sherman] might represent not just the creative writing program, but the College as a whole. Her work illustrates how the practice of art is often both fueled by and responding to research in the humanities.”
For instance, in her short story, “And Then There is Time,” Sherman integrates material from linguistics and film studies courses to imagine an alternate version of California, where “vocal fry has become part of the accepted vernacular, and that second-rate movies are sometimes the ones most helping define a national collective understanding.”
Alongside her creative work, Sherman has participated in Emory’s Summer Undergraduate Research Program as a student researcher, served as a research assistant for Emory’s Creative Writing Department, worked as a prose reader for The Adroit Journal, and assisted the online literary archive Writing Atlas as a fellow.
After graduation, Sherman will pursue a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.
“The program is particularly geared toward writing across genres, so I’m excited to continue improving my fiction while expanding outward into other forms,” Sherman says. She has also been accepted into the Association of Writers & Writing Program’s Mentorship Program, where she plans on preparing new pieces to workshop before her master’s program.