Internationally-known poet, essayist and artist Colin D. Halloran won the 2016 Writer-In-Service Award from The Lillian E. Smith Center of Piedmont College. The annual award includes a two-week residency at the college’s Lillian E. Smith Center, an educational and artist retreat.

Halloran teaches writing at Fairfield University in Fairfield, Conn., where he earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing in 2012. A combat veteran, his debut collection of poetry, “Shortly Thereafter,” documents his experiences on the front lines of Afghanistan and how they affected him upon returning to civilian life.

He won 2012 Main Street Rag Poetry Award and Massachusetts Center for the Book declared “Shortly Thereafter” a “must-read book” in 2013.