The Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow is pleased to announce the winner of the 2023 Moondancer Fellowship for authors who express their passion for the natural world and concern for the environment through their writing. Writers of any literary genre were invited to apply. From 36 applications received from an international pool of writers, the panel of judges selected Marie Kressin as rating the highest for literary merit and likelihood of publication. She will receive a fully funded two-week residency at the Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow to work on her proposed project.
Marie Kressin is currently an MFA candidate at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. Her poetry has been published in Arkansas's Best Emerging Poets, SWWIM, Timber, and elsewhere. She grew up in the Ozark Mountains, just a 15 minute walk from Lake Norfork. Now, she lives in Little Rock, Arkansas. She writes full-time for SchoolCEO Magazine and is the Program Assistant for the Hellbender Gathering of Poets, an eco-poetry festival that will launch in Asheville, North Carolina, in 2025.
During her residency, Kressin will be working on putting together a collection of poems centered around the Arkansas landscape, femininity, desire, and disaster. Of her project, Kressin says, “As an MFA candidate at the University of the South, I’m beginning to think carefully about how to thread my work from over the past several years into a cohesive collection. My poetry may appear disparate at first, but there are important through-lines: rural Arkansas, family, daughter-ness, father-ness, Southernness, dirt, birds, the water. Wonder. Disaster. Right now, I have approximately 40 pages worth of this collection written and revised. My goal during this residency is to spend time in silence and Earth generating new poetry and returning to my already revised work with a fresh eye—so that by the time I emerge, I am closer to a full manuscript.”
For more information about sponsoring a fellowship in the genre and/or area of interest you are passionate about, visit www.writerscolony.org/sponsor-a-fellowship.
The Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow is a 501(c)3 nonprofit whose mission is to nurture writers of all backgrounds, genres, and levels of experience in a supportive environment that builds community, stimulates new thinking, energizes creative expression, and optimizes productivity. Since opening its doors to writers in 2000, the Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow has made a lasting impact on the arts and literary communities hosting over 1,700 writers from 48 states and 13 countries.
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