An additional $20,000 in Creative Writing Scholarships Awarded
The Goddard College MFA in Creative Writing Program congratulates Steven Dunn, recipient of the $10,000 2018 Goddard/PEN North American Scholarship, and second-place $5,000 awardee Masha Sukovic.
Ten additional scholarship candidates received Engaged Artist Awards of $2,000 each: PEN America members Amy Barnes, Lisa Chambers, Will Duprey, Ron Estrada, Brian Jackson, Jo Manu Maltzman, Sarah Monahan, Jay Sheets, and Rachel Spalding; and PEN Canada member Magdalen Bowyer.
Steven Dunn, a professional member of PEN America, is the author of the novel, Potted Meat (Tarpaulin Sky Press 2015), which was a Colorado Book Award Finalist and shortlisted for Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists. His second book water & power is forthcoming from Tarpaulin Sky Press. He was born and raised in West Virginia, and after ten years in the Navy, earned a BA in Creative Writing from the University of Denver.
As a student at Goddard, he plans to produce a body of work that addresses “the multiple layers of disappearance of black bodies through the lens of state-sanctioned violence and patriarchy. Through these lenses I hope to parallel historical racism with modern racism while paying particular attention to the resulting exhaustion and trauma of both timelines, and how those are passed through our generations.”
Elena Georgiou, Director of the MFA in Creative Writing Program, described Mr. Dunn’s work as “piercing. His straightforward, stripped-down style allows nothing to get in the way of the story.”
As the second-place awardee, hybrid prose writer Masha Sukovic, will receive a $5,000 scholarship. Dr. Sukovic is a member of PEN America. She holds an MA and PhD from Texas A&M University and was the 2017 winner of the San Francisco Writing Contest in Adult Fiction. Her work has appeared in I come from the World literary journal and Permafrost Magazine.
At Goddard, she plans to explore the hybrid form with a “focus on the elements of magical realism, as it examines the notions of hybridity, postcolonialism, and the supernatural and natural coexisting in the same space and at the same time.”
The $10,000 Goddard/PEN North American Scholarship is the result of a partnership between Goddard’s MFA in Creative Writing Program and PEN America, PEN Canada, and PEN Mexico, which together comprise the North American branches of PEN International, the world’s preeminent literary organization.
The MFA in Creative Writing Program is now enrolling students. For more information, visit goddard.edu, call 1-800-906-8312, or email admissions@goddard.edu.
