2011 Minnesota Emerging Writers’ Grant Winners Announced
Contest is now: CLOSED
The Loft received 241 applications to the 2011-2012 Minnesota Emerging Writers’ Grant. A preliminary review panel narrowed the field to 85 applications which were sent to judges Rob Spillman and Tony Valenzuela for final consideration.
Grantees
John Lee Clark of Maplewood received $9,000 for a new Braille display, tuition for a writers’ seminar or private mentorship; travel to and fee for ASL performance tutorial; and expenses for three months’ rent and utilities. John Lee Clark was born deaf and became blind in adolescence. He edited the anthology Deaf American Poetry and published a poetry chapbook, Suddenly Slow. He works as a freelance editor and runs a small press for the signing community with his wife, the deaf cartoonist Adrean Clark. They live in Maplewood with their three sons.
Sean Hill of Bemidji received $5,000 to be applied to travel to and research in Atlanta and Milledgeville, Georgia, equipment and supply costs, and living expenses while he completes a second poetry manuscript. Sean Hill works as a freelance writer and on-call cook at Concordia Language Villages. He has an MFA from the University of Houston and has received fellowships and grants from Cave Canem, Bread Loaf, the Jerome Foundation, and Stanford University, where he was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry. His first collection, Blood Ties & Brown Liquor, was published by the University of Georgia Press in 2008.
Ethan Rutherford of Minneapolis received $5,000 to rent a studio at the University Baptist Church to focus on completion of his short story manuscript. Ethan Rutherford’s fiction has appeared in various publications such as Ploughshares, One Story, American Short Fiction, as well as in the anthologies Fiction on a Stick: Stories by Writers from Minnesota and The Best American Short Stories 2009.
Sun Yung Shin of Apple Valley received $9,000 to cover childcare, living expenses, and studio rental as she completes her second poetry collection, which will be published by Coffee House Press in 2012, in addition to Web design and hosting and attending the 2012 AWP conference. Sun Yung Shin’s first book of poems, Skirt Full of Black, received the Asian American Literary Award for Poetry in 2008. Her second collection, Rough, and Savage, is forthcoming in 2012. She has received grants and fellowships from the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Jerome Foundation, the Bush Foundation, and elsewhere.
Honorable mentions went to middle-grade novelist Kelly Barnhill of Minneapolis and to poet and performance artist Saymoukda Duangphouxay Vongsay of Saint Paul. |
