Writer Loses Her Eclipse Award Because of Alleged Plagiarism
Writer Stephanie Diaz was stripped of her Eclipse Award for magazine writing about horse racing Tuesday after an arbitrator found apparent plagiarism in her entry.
Arbitrator Frank McCulloch, while unable to determine whether Diaz or an editor was responsible, ruled that “passages, phrases and concepts” in two of the entries appeared to have been taken from other sources.
Diaz won the magazine award for several articles published in The Backstretch, a Louisville-based magazine.
Diaz had said the passages in question were not in the draft she submitted to The Backstretch, but editors for the magazine denied that they were responsible.
Diaz will keep a 1995 Eclipse Award for newspaper writing that appeared in the Riverside Press-Enterprise.
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