Ann Hood wins 2012 Fab Fiber Fellowship
Ann Hood is the winner of the first Fab Fiber Fellowship for 2012. She is the author of the bestselling novel The Knitting Circle, which will be made by HBO into a TV movie starring Katherine Heigl. Hood shared her personal story of losing her 5-year-old daughter Grace in 2002 through the memoir, Comfort: A Journey Through Grief, which was named one of the top 10 nonfiction books of 2008 by Entertainment Weekly and was a New York Times Editor’s choice. She will travel from her home in Providence, Rhode Island, and her Fellowship coincides with Books in Bloom, a celebration of reading and writing in Eureka Springs May 20. At the festival, Hood will talk about turning to knitting when tragedy struck and her lifelong comforts of reading and writing failed her. She has written a number of other books, both fiction and nonfiction, along with short stories and essays that have appeared in The New York Times, Good Housekeeping, and Ladies Home Journal.
The Fab Fiber Fellowship is for writing with an emphasis on the fiber arts. Applicants must have either a proposed project or a work in progress such as an article, book, instruction pamphlet, biography, journal, memoir, or mystery novel. Knitting, spinning, weaving or the processes and fibers used in those arts must be central to the project. The Fab Fiber Fellowship entitles the recipient to one week free residency at the Writers' Colony at Dairy Hollow, in beautiful Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Each resident has a private suite with writing space, private bath, wireless and/or cable hook up, uninterrupted writing time, dinner prepared five nights a week and served in our community dining room, the camaraderie of other professional writers when you want it, and a fully stocked community kitchen for breakfast and lunch.
Elizabeth Mack is 2012 Moondancer Fellowship winner
Elizabeth Mack of Omaha, Nebraska is the winner of the 2012 Moondancer Fellowship. She will be spending the month of June at the Writers’ Colony, in our new Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired Usonian house next door. We’ve just finished renovating the house, which contains five suites, a conference room and a kitchen. Elizabeth will be working on a nonfiction book titled with the working title of Healing Springs, a nature-based memoir chronicling her rebellious adolescent years spent in the hills of the small Ozark community of Sulphur Springs. The three medicinal springs in the area were believed to heal any and all kinds of physical ailments, and serve as a backdrop to larger issues of nature. The springs have been lost due to ground water contamination, and Elizabeth illustrates what happens when people experience a disconnect with nature and the importance of ecological conservation and preservation.
The Moondancer Fellowship is awarded to an author writing in any genre about any aspect of nature and the outdoors. This fellowship provides for four weeks of free residency at The Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow in the historic arts village of Eureka Springs, Arkansas.
FabFiber Fellowship
Susan Burden of Clarksville, Ark. was the FabFiber Fellowship winner for 2011. She has been a teacher of history, culture, English and Latin for 40 years and is a member of several knitting groups in her area. She has presented workshops on her version of a Cowichan sweater and a Fair Isle sweater at the Arkansas Fiber Art Extravaganza. In the course of her research, she discovered writers of history lacked knowledge of knitting and those who wrote about knitting lacked historical knowledge. She decided to use her fellowship to put together an article incorporating both, along with pictures, for Piecework magazine. The magazine was scheduled to publish its sixth issue of Historical Knitting in early 2012.
Composing Your Life Fellowship
Donna Stjerna was the winner of the 2011 Composing Your Life Fellowship. A member of Still on the Hill, the songwriter and Fayetteville, Ark. resident plays six instruments and has won several awards, including the 2011 Governor’s Folk Life Award and the Parent’s Choice award for her Toucan Jam CD. She began by playing the fiddle in the kitchen with her father at the age of 12, later touring the country with her father and joining a country show band at 19. After 20 years of playing cover tunes, it was when she helped form the quartet Still on the Hill that she began writing songs. She now has more than 600 to her credit. She used the fellowship time to play a plethora of instruments and explore her ancestral roots, the SAAMI of northern Finland, who had a sounding called “yoiking”, which is vocalizing the essence of things. Her goal was to use the quiet and solitude of the retreat to see what kind of songs came through.
The Mahony Fellowship for Courageous Writing for Young People
Joy Pope-Alandete (left) with WCDH Board Member Josh MahonyJoy Pope-Alandete of Decatur, Georgia, was recently named the winner of the 2010 Mahony Fellowship for Courageous Writing for Young Adults. Joy grew up in Powder Springs, Georgia, spent some time out west and then returned to Georgia. She has a B. A. in English from the University of Oregon and an M.A. from the St. John’s College Great Books program. She is a leader for two Girl Scout troops, a frequent school and community volunteer, and the mother of two girls.
Joshua Mahony, Writers’ Colony Board member, felt that Joy’s writing and characters fully met the spirit and hope of his intent in founding the fellowship to inspire, stimulate and challenge children.
We know that Joy will be successful with her project. Congratulations, Joy!
The Moondancer Fellowship for Writing About Nature and the Outdoors
The winner of the 2010 Moondancer Fellowship for writing about nature and the outdoors is Helen Krieger of New Orleans, Louisiana. Congratulations, Helen!
Helen has been a prolific writer for the past decade, working in journalism, fiction and screenwriting. She received her BA in psychology from the University of Dallas, then moved to Boston, where she worked as a journalist for The MetroWest Daily News and The Jamaica Plain Gazette for a year before once again being tempted by the South. She moved to New Orleans and co-founded a local paper, The Bywater Marigny Current, which she ran for several years before turning it over to her partner so she could concentrate on writing fiction.
Helen says that even with the grim environmental times we find ourselves in, she’d rather be inspired by the power and diversity of nature than depressed because of what we’re doing to it. She feels our way forward is to constantly draw people back to the natural world as a teacher rather than a reason to be ashamed of ourselves and what we’ve done.
Helen is a returning alum of the Writers’ Colony and we look forward to having her back this fall.
The Duncan Eat-Write! Culinary Fellowship
Lucindy Willis of Yanceyville, North Carolina has been chosen as the winner of the Duncan Eat-Write Culinary Fellowship for 2010. Lucindy is co-owner and operator of the Yancey House Restaurant & Gallery, where they work extensively with local farmers and grow their own produce at the restaurant and farm, helping guests see the connections between the food on their plate and the farms surrounding the restaurant.
She also writes a column called "The Literary Chef" which appears weekly in their newspaper, The Caswell Messenger.
We are very excited to be welcoming Lucindy to the Writers' Colony at Dairy Hollow this fall.
Winner of the KidLit! Fellowship Announced
Writer David Davis, of Fort Worth, Texas, has won the KidLit! Fellowship for Writing for Children & Young Adults. This Fellowship awards a two-week stay at the Colony.
In addition to his writing, David is a humorist, cartoonist and speaker. He grew up in San Antonio, Texas, and most of his stories draw on his Texas roots as well as his baby-boomer love of music. David is the author of Jazz Cats and Ten Redneck Babies, both of which were named to the Children's Choice Top 100 list. Jazz Cats was also a finalist for the Texas Golden Spur Award. David's satirical Night Before Christmas books are perennial comedy best-sellers, and he is a member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators.
David Davis at WCDH
Tuesday, April 10, 2012 at 11:20AM 
where she was on staff for three years before going freelance, Elle magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, the New York Times and Edible San Francisco. She writes articles and recipes to help readers eat both seasonally and locally at localfoods.about.com for About.com. She wrote, produced and hosted a radio special, “I’d Eat That,” for a San Francisco radio station in 2008, and presented a talk on "The Cheese Stands Alone: An Autobiographical History of Pizza" at The Lab at Belmar (now part of the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver) in 2009.
