2016 Residents Announced!

We made it to year two! 

In a competitive process that drew 148  applicants from throughout the United States and Canada, our jury of Northwest writers blindly read submissions. They selected 15 literary writers who will come live and work for two-week stints in Mineral this summer, advancing their work in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. Additionally, we will also welcome our first-ever visual artist this summer, Karen McInturff from Lewis County.

“Our jurors had a tough job this year, in the best way,” said Nicole Hardy, a board member (as well as poet and memoirist) who led the readers. “The caliber of writing they read, from an international pool of writers, working in a wide range of genres, was impressive. We’re thrilled to host such a talented group of residents.” 

This summer’s writing residents include four June Dodge Fellows, a program which fully funds writers who hail from the Northwestern United States (Alaska, Montana, Idaho, Oregon, or Washington) or western Canada. Additionally, the Erin Donovan Writing Fellowship debuts this year, created in memory of Erin Donovan, a fiction writer and teacher in Oregon who passed away during 2015 and whose friends and family are supporting a residency in her memory. It is fitting that the recipient of this first-ever fellowship, Jennifer Haupt, is writing about the loss of loved ones.

The summer resident community offers a nod to the Northwest: Mineral School will host eight writers from Seattle, three from Canada, one from Montana, three from Oregon, and one artist from Centralia, in Lewis County,  where Mineral School is located.

Residents attending Mineral School

Summer fellows include:

• Pat Dobie (Vancouver, British Columbia), June Dodge Fellow in fiction, writes about “outsiders.” She’s currently writing Mad Agnes, a novel set at the 1893 Chicago World Fair.
• Constance Eggers (Corvallis, OR), June Dodge Fellow in poetry, is working on a manuscript called Daughters of Red Eva, inspired by her female ancestors and narratives of history, memory, and myth. Author of the poetry collection Reliquary, she is active in the Calyx poetry collective.
• Bernard Grant (Seattle), June Dodge Fellow in fiction, is currently working on a collection of interlinked stories about a mixed-race family in Olympia. An editor at The Nervous Breakdown, he is completing an MFA at Pacific Lutheran University. 
• Jennifer Haupt (Seattle), Erin Donovan Writing Fellow in fiction, writes about the links between grief and love. She’s finishing The Sunflowers of Rwanda, about the shadow cast by a character’s loss of a sibling and Rwandans grieving loved ones lost to political turmoil.
• Laura Lampton Scott (Portland, OR), June Dodge Fellow in fiction, writes fiction and nonfiction and is completing her first novel. Work has appeared in Michigan Quarterly, Okey Panky, and more.  

Writing and visual artist residents include:

• Daemond Arrindell (Seattle), poetry, is a poet, performer, and teaching artist. His work explores mind, body, and environment, as well as social justice.
• Celeste Brash (Portland), nonfiction, is a longtime travel writer working on a memoir called Black Pearl, about five years she spent farming black pearls on a remote Polynesian atoll.
• Cara Diaconoff (Seattle), fiction, writes about historical as well as contemporary themes and will work on short fiction as well as a new novel set in the aftermath of the 1965 March on Selma.
• Leanne Dunic (Vancouver, British Columbia), poetry, is at work on Hysteria, a manuscript tracing an Asian-American woman’s return to an unfamiliar home country. She won an Alice Munro fiction prize and is a musician as well as a writer.
• Rachel Edelman (Seattle), poetry, writes poetry engaged with Jewish paradigms of diaspora, and will spend her residency working on her manuscript By Water.
• Gabriela Denise Frank (Seattle), fiction, is working on a collection of short stories set in the Pacific Northwest. Her stories explore themes of fidelity, obsession, betrayal, aging, and transition.
• Jennie Goode (Seattle), nonfiction, is working on a collection of essays about community, culture, and the natural world.
• Molly Laich (Seattle), fiction, is at work on a novel and has published in many journals. She has worked as a dog walker, and named her own pooch after Dorothy Parker.
• Sonya Lea (Seattle/Canada), fiction, also writes nonfiction and makes films. She’s the author of the memoir Wondering Who You Are, and she will work on a novel during her residency.  
• Karen McInturff (Centralia, WA), visual artist, works with fiber and also knits, weaves, spins wool, and sews. She’s at work on pieces that express her interest in life’s layers–geologic, familial, societal.
• Jason Vanhee (Seattle), fiction, has published a young adult horror novel as well as many short stories. History and fantasy inform his work.