Just a Few Weeks Left to Apply for the 2020 Levis Prizes of $5,000 for a First Book of Poetry and First Book of Fiction  

Thank you to all who have submitted materials for this year’s prize thus far, and best of luck to all.  If you’ve been mulling it over, contemplating whether or not to apply, please know that it isn’t too late to get your applications in…

If you needed a bit more encouragement, however, here’s what poet Jennifer Funk, one of last year’s recipients, recently had to say about what the winning this prize has meant for her life and work:

“When I tell people I am writer—and it is because of Ellen Bryant Voigt I do this, she who was so adamant that if I had gone to the trouble of getting myself to and through Warren Wilson, I should damn well claim the legacy—I do say first, “I am a writer,” because to say first, “I am a poet,” inevitably, inevitably, elicits a remark to effect of, “Oh, how nice.  I mean, I don’t really get poems, but that’s great.”  One shrugs.  Why couldn’t I have chosen fiction?  But I never dreamed of being understood (deeply legible, narratively inclined poet though I inevitably, inevitably, am) and I never imagined being sought out by other people to read, let alone widely, let alone making any money.  Forget prizes or publishing, I could barely get the arms of my ambition around the notion of stringing several decent sentences together in a row.  And yet.  And yet, each writer’s relationship with ambition is particular and eventually, I did come to terms with the reality that if I was—really and for truly—going to claim the legacy, I had to not only protect my writing life, but preserve it and until we have (as I raise my progressive fist, one day!) abolished capitalism, one must finance one’s life, that is to say, all of one’s various lives.  

I applied to the Levis in the last hour the prize was open and I did so without flinching or with any great hope.  A penny in a well, that was all.  I hardly need to tell you of my tearful shrieking or my astonishment or the absurd privilege of having an additional 5k on hand in 2020.  Like so much else in my wee little life, to have won the Levis seems patently ridiculous, and yet.  And yet, I will tell you that for the first time I feel a certain duty—to my community, to the tradition of our craft, to the reckless world we live in—to keep writing.  To win was to hold myself accountable to the legacy, and to live a writing life in which I try to do us proud is one I am (eye roll away) lucky to live.” 

As a reminder, the Levis Stipends are open only to alumni who have not yet published a full-length collection in the selected genre in a standard edition.

Submissions will be accepted until January 8, 2021, and must be made via our new Submission Manager: https://www.levisprize.com/submissions/

You can find current submission guidelines here.  We look so forward to receiving your work!

Please feel free to direct any queries or requests for more information to:  

Nathan McClain

Levis Fellowship Administrator 

[email protected] 

The MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College congratulates former faculty member Louise Glück on receiving the 2020 Nobel Award in Literature.  Glück taught in our program during its initial four years at Goddard College (1976-1980), and taught intermittently during the Program’s first decade at Warren Wilson. She has also taken part in subsequent anniversary celebrations.

Program founder Ellen Bryant Voigt offers the following in celebration of Glück’s honor:

What a wonderful day for poetry!  Although the world of commerce does not always get it right, this time it did.  Louise has given us both her vibrant, indelible poems, and her example: her utter and unsentimental commitment to the highest standards for the form, pushing past any particular achievement (and there have been many). As usual, Louise articulates it best:

Worldly honor makes existence in the world easier….. But as an emblem of what I want – it is not capable of being had in my lifetime. I want to live after I die, in that ancient way.  And there’s no way of knowing whether that will happen, and there will be no knowing, no matter how many blue ribbons have been plastered to my corpse.

And the bonus is that this choice has happened when we are most in need of the stringencies and reach of great art.

In English, “glück” with its distinctive umlaut, translates as “good luck,” and it was indeed lucky that Louise taught at Goddard in our pioneering low-residency Program for Writers, and, with Ben and Betty Holden, was instrumental in moving the Program to Warren Wilson College.   More, then, than luck—the Nobel choice has been a gift to Louise’s readers, current and future.

 

                                                                                                       

A Letter from FOW board president Abby Wender (poetry ’08)

Fall 2020

Ellen Bryant Voigt’s lyric masterpiece, Kyrie, published in 1995, recounts events in a small town during the 1918-20 influenza pandemic. Ellen remarks that the paradox at the heart of the book, which also speaks to us at this moment, is that “the very things we need most—nearness, proximity, and community—spread the disease.” This fall our goal is to raise the final $25,000 to fully endow the Ellen Bryant Voigt Scholarship Fund. We are so close! With your help we will be able to grant the first award in early 2021 to a student completing a first manuscript. We ask that you join us in contributing whatever you can to meet our financial goal. 

Like many organizations this year, we have been presented with new challenges by the coronavirus. One example of our community’s creative response took hold in April, when Friends of Writers announced it would offer eight emergency Covid-19 grants of $500. Due to a spontaneous outpouring of additional support, we were able to fund all twenty-seven applicants.  In another example, volunteers converted the alumni conference from on-ground to virtual in just two short months (it was to be held in 2020 at Mount Holyoke, and hopefully will be there in 2021). Although we could not gather in person, more than a hundred participants met, attended readings, panels, caucuses, workshops—and hung out together on a virtual “porch.” These are just two illustrations showing us how the thing we need most—a vibrant community—thrives and expands, even in hard times. We know of no better way to acknowledge Ellen’s remarkable legacy than to fulfill the scholarship fund created in her name. We thank all of you who may have already given to our Fall Appeal, and I am writing to ask that if you have not yet given, you make a donation today. 

Sadly, the crisis we are facing won’t abate quickly, and the needs of our fellow writers—both students and alums–will grow this year. Friends of Writers remains committed to helping writers meet their potential through graduate study and also through providing support and resources via its website, multiple reading series, a contest, and the yearly conference. We support diversity and inclusivity through our scholarships and internships. We intend to make it possible for every writer to pursue graduate study in spite of financial disparity.  All of our scholarship grants are need-based. 

Most contributors to Friends of Writers are writers, too. I hope you’ll join—with a donation of any amount—the individuals with whom you share this path, so that together we can reach the goal of fully endowing the EBV scholarship. You can donate online at friendsofwriters.org, or mail in your donation using the enclosed card and envelope. Every donation is meaningful. 

In nearness and community, and with best wishes for your well-being,

Abigail Wender

President, Friends of Writers

PS: Looking for inspired thinking from brilliant writers? Download an audio lecture from our store: https://store.friendsofwriters.org/

Sweet are the songs of bitterness and blame,
against the stranger spitting on the street,
the neighbor’s shared contaminated meal,
the rusted nail, the doctor come too late.
 
Sweet are the songs of envy and despair,
which count the healthy strangers that we meet
and mark the neighbor’s illness mild and brief,
the birds that go on nesting, the brilliant air.
 
Sweet are the songs of wry exacted praise,
scraped from the grave, shaped in the torn throat
and sung at the helpful stranger on the train,
and at the neighbor’s misery brought near,
and at the waters parted at our feet,
and to the god who thought to keep us here.
 
 
                                 —Ellen Bryant Voigt, from Kyrie

Dear Community, 

Thanks to the many generous donations given to help support those in our MFA family who applied for FOW COVID -19 grants, the Friends of Writers’ board was able to expand the number of grants we could offer so that every applicant could receive $500.00. We are deeply moved by our community’s outpouring of support during this difficult time.

Without the support of our donors and board, Friends of Writers would not be able to do the work that we do. Thank you, all.

Stay safe, 

Abby

Abigail Wender

President, Friends of Writers