Friends of Writers has already begun plans to celebrate our 30^th Anniversary in 2021. On this anniversary, we will recognize Ellen Bryant Voigt, our founder, for her remarkable contributions to American poetry, teaching, and innovation. We write today in the hope that you will give to the Ellen Bryant Voigt Scholarship Fund, which both honors Ellen and enables her work to continue. This scholarship fund is the best way we know to acknowledge and thank Ellen for the gifts she has given to the writing community. 

When fully endowed at $300,000, the EBV Scholarship Fund will provide substantial funding to be used to support a MFA studenttowards the completion of a thesis manuscript. Your contribution is an essential gift of time: to write, revise, and benefit from the guidance of an accomplished faculty. Thanks to you, we achieved our goal and raised more than $30,000 this spring. We are just $100,000 short of endowment, which, with the help of individual donors like you, we will reach by 2021.

Ellen founded the first low-residency MFA program for creative writers in 1976, knowing that there were many adults who had delayed the dream of going to graduate school for good reasons—family, work, health, and finances. We all know what it means to put a dream aside and what it requires to bring it to fruition. The EBV Fund will help students keep their dream right at the center of their lives, avoiding at least some of the delays that dilute it. I hope that you will the join FOW board members in giving the Gift of Time to another writer. 

FOW is committed to helping writers meet their potential through graduate study and provide support and resources through its website, multiple reading series, contest, and yearly conference. We support diversity and inclusivity through our scholarships and internships. We hope to make it possible for every writer to pursue graduate study in spite of financial disparity. 

In the spirit of the season, please help us honor Ellen’s lifework and FOW’s mission by endowing the Ellen Bryant Voigt Scholarship Fund, and give whatever you can so that we may award the first scholarship to a student in Ellen’s name in 2021. 

We wish you and your loved ones a happy, healthy new year, and, most of all, the gift of time. 

Only six weeks left until the deadline for the Larry Levis Prize! Don’t let them slip past without submitting. Please let Ashley Nissler know if you have any questions: https://friendsofwriters.submittable.com/submit

An excerpt from “Sundowning” by Angela Narciso Torres (poetry, ’09) published at The Missouri Review:

SUNDOWNING

                                                     for my mother, Carmen

The sweetest meat clings to the bone,
  my mother says, knifing her steak.
Carmen. Silver spade on my tongue.

  Mahjong nights, her mother and father gone,
she cried herself to sleep. Blamed in the morning
  for her mother’s losing hand. Unlucky tears!

The sweetest meat—she begins
  at dinner, tearing off a chicken leg.
What will she recall by morning?

  Named for Our Lady of Mount Carmel,
she pinned brown scapulars under our shirts,
  wet stamps that cleaved to our skin.

Carmen. Prayer on the breath.
  Amid potted ferns, she works
a jigsaw puzzle. Bizet on the radio. […continue reading here]

Robert Boswell Interviews Tony Hoagland at the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers

Tony Hoagland Interviews Robert Boswell at the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers

Two 2018 Levis Prizes of $5,000 for a First Book of Poetry and First Book of Fiction

Two Larry Levis Post-Graduate Stipends, one in fiction and one in poetry, are given to support graduates of the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers who are completing first books. Each 2018 award will be made to a writer in the amount of $5,000. Judges will be announced with the winning manuscripts.

Eligibility

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. A standard edition is defined as 150 or more pages in a print run of 1500 or more copies for fiction, and as 48 or more pages in a print run of 500 or more copies for poetry. Entrants to the competition must hold the MFA degree from Warren Wilson College. All alumni are eligible.

Guidelines

1. All submissions must be made via Submittable. An entry fee of $30 is required to process the application.
2. Include in your application a statement regarding how the award will be used, projected completion date of the book manuscript, and a list of publication credits.
3. Include a 40-page fiction manuscript or 20-page poetry manuscript. Document margins should be at least one inch; text should be in an easily readable 12-point typeface. Pages submitted beyond the page count will not be considered. Manuscripts are judged blindly; your name should not appear anywhere on your project statement or manuscript. If it does, your application will be disqualified and removed from consideration.
4. Submit your entry via Submittable. Do not use your name in Submittable project title or filenames. (Your project title can be either the title of your manuscript or something like “Levis poetry manuscript.”) Label your attachments “cover letter” and “manuscript.” Both must be submitted as .pdf files.

Deadlines

Submissions will be accepted between September 1 and November 15, 2018.

Stipends will be awarded in January 2019. Stipends are fully taxable under United States tax laws, and Friends of Writers must declare the awards to the Internal Revenue Service. Taxes and payments of taxes are solely the responsibility of individual award winners.

About Larry Levis

Larry Levis (1946-1996) was an award-winning poet who wrote six books of poetry during his lifetime. His collection, Elegy, was published posthumously. A Selected Poemswas published in 2000. The Darkening Trapeze, a collection of last poems, was published in 2016. Levis was a much-beloved member of the faculty at the MFA Program for Writers, cherished as much for his incisive mind as for the care and attention he gave to his students.

Any queries or requests for more information should be addressed to:

Ashley Nissler Levis Fellowship Administrator [email protected]