Highline Community College writing professor Sharon Hashimoto has been given an Exemplary Status award by the Washington Community and Technical College Humanities Association.

The award is for outstanding practitioners in the humanities.

Hashimoto was recognized for her work as an author, teacher and adviser to the college's award-winning literary magazine, the Arcturus.

While teaching creative writing and basic composition courses, Hashimoto also has advised the magazine and organized the annual Flight Path Writers Conference.

She served as a judge for the Federal Way Arts Commission's first writing conference this spring, as well as on King County Arts Commission and Seattle Arts Commission selection committees, and she contributes to Pacific Reader and the Asian Pacific Islander book review published with the International Examiner.

Hashimoto also has been published in a number of journals, including Poetry, The American Scholar, Seattle Review, and Asian Pacific American Journal.

She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, King County Arts Commission, and Artist Trust, and published a chapbook, Reparations.

Her book The Crane Wife, which won the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize 2003, was published by Story Line Press in 2003.