2020 Residents Announced!

We made it to year six — in time for a pandemic! Nonetheless, Mineral School, the “little residency that could” located in a former elementary school in a lake town near Mt. Rainier, is proud to announce The Class of 2020. In a competitive process that drew 238 applicants from throughout the United States and Canada, our jury of Northwest writers and visual artists blindly reviewed submissions. They selected 20 creative folks (and one alum) who will live and work for two-week stints in Mineral, advancing their work in poetry, fiction, nonfiction, graphic novels, mixed media, illustration, painting, and paper arts. While normally the Class of 2020 would join us during Summer 2020, due to safety concerns related to the coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic, we are inviting the entire group to matriculate in 2021 and will schedule 2021 sessions with them at the end of 2020. 

“Every summer at Mineral School is different–but the pandemic’s dangers make 2020 different in that we’ll forego residency and put our energy into preparing for 2021,” said Jane Hodges, founder of Mineral School. “While we’re excited to bring together writers and artists from all over the country to advance their work in a one-of-a-kind village tucked below Mt. Rainier, we know that waiting until widespread health risks have subsided and the related economic aftershocks have dissipated is the responsible thing to do for the Mineral community, the artists we serve, and our volunteers and staff.” 

“This year’s applicants were exceptional, showing incredible talent and commitment to their craft.,” said Katy Hannigan, jurying coordinator. “Throughout my years-long relationship with Mineral School as a friend, dorm host, and now on the jurying process, I have been continually impressed by the caliber of applicants and the genuine goodness of the residents. I’m thrilled to have worked with the jury to honor this year’s batch of residents and can’t wait to see what they bring to Mineral School in Summer 2021.”

While its roots are in serving literary artists, Mineral School also hosts visual artists. This summer four artists will work on graphic novels, pen-and-ink and watercolor illustration, mixed-media sculpture, pyrography, and more. Mineral School is able to offer 10 fellowships to the Class of 2020, including four June Dodge Fellows, a program which funds writers who hail from the Northwestern United States (Alaska, Montana, Idaho, Oregon, or Washington) or western Canada; four Sustainable Arts Foundation (SAF) Parent Artist Fellowships which fund working artists from throughout North America raising children age 18 or younger;  the Mona Lisa Roberts Visual Arts Fellowship, family-funded in memory of artist Mona Lisa Roberts for a Northwest visual artist who identifies as LGBTQ+; and one Erin Donovan Writing Fellowship, in memory of an Oregon fiction writer whose friends-and-family community supports a residency in her memory.

2020 residents include:

• Maxwell Addington (Vancouver BC), June Dodge fellow in fiction, is currently revising a novel launched while he attended New York University as the Jill Davis Fellow for a student earning an MFA in creative writing. 
• Meredith Arena (Seattle, WA), Erin Donovan fellow in poetry, works as a teaching artist in public schools. Her work can be found in Silver Needle Press, Longleaf Review, Paragon Press: Echo, Entropy, SHIFT Queer Literary Arts Journal, Lunch Ticket, Lion’s Roar, and is upcoming in Peatsmoke Journal. She holds an MFA and a certificate in teaching Creative Writing from Antioch University – Los Angeles.
• Brent Armendinger (Los Angeles, CA), poetry, has published poems and translations in Anomaly, Asymptote, Aufgabe, Bloom, Colorado Review, Conjunctions, Denver Quarterly, Ghost Proposal, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Interim, LIT, Puerto del Sol, and Volt. An associate professor of English and World Literature at Pitzer College, Armendinger’s most recent book Street Gloss is a hybrid work of site-specific poetry and experimental translation, featuring Argentinian writers. 
• Jessica Rae Bergamino (Seattle, WA), June Dodge fellow in poetry, is the author of UNMANNED, winner of prizes from Noemi Press (2017) and the University of Indianapolis. Her work has appeared in Third Coast, Black Warrior Review, and the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day newsletter. A doctoral candidate in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Utah, she holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Washington and an MA in English and Creative Writing from the University of California. 
• Kamari Bright (Seattle, WA), June Dodge fellow in poetry, has published in NILVX: A Book of Magic, Jack Straw Writers Anthology, and Moss. She has presented at Lit Crawl Seattle, Cascadia Poetry Fest, and the Folklife Festival, and screened video-poems at the International Video Poetry Festival in Greece, Tacoma Film Festival, Cadence Video Poetry Festival, and Festival International du Film PanAfricain de Cannes. 
• Bill Carty (Seattle, WA), SAF fellow in poetry, published Huge Cloudy (Octopus Books, 2019), and has received fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Artist Trust, Hugo House, and Jack Straw. The winner of the 2017 Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America, he has published in the Boston Review, Ploughshares, Oversound, Iowa Review, Conduit, Warscapes, and elsewhere.
• Kristi Coulter (Seattle, WA), nonfiction, is the author of Nothing Good Can Come From This (MCdxFSG, 2018), which was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, New York Magazine, Longreads, Elle, Glamour, Amazon Original Stories, Columbia Journal, and elsewhere. She is at work on Exit Interview, a literary memoir about her decade-long Amazon career, forthcoming in 2021.
• Nic de Luna (Victoria, BC) SAF fellow in prose, has studied fiction at Literary Arts Portland, Catapult, and through the Tin House Summer Writers Workshop. A contributor to BoiSociety.com, Nic de Luna is at work on a third novel. 
• Rose Himber Howse (Asheville, NC), fiction, is a former high school teacher and queer writer whose first work of fiction is forthcoming in Sonora Review.  She is currently working on a collection of short stories in conversation with Southern Appalachian folktales. Her nonfiction and interviews have appeared in YES! Magazine, Dead Darlings, GrubStreet’s site for novelists, and she received an honorable mention in The Best American Non-Required Reading 2018. 
• Erinn Kathryn (Portland, OR), visual art, works in sculpture, mixed media, painting, and installation. She has exhibited work at Pacific Northwest College of Art, Alaska House Art Gallery, Multnomah Arts Center, and Bison Gallery @ Oregon College of Art and Craft. She has received grants from Oregon’s Regional Arts and Culture Council for sculpture/installation work. 
• Sherri Levine (Portland, OR), poetry, has published In These Voices (Poetry Box, 2018) as well as poetry and art in journals including The Timberline Review, CALYX, Driftwood Press, Willawaw, Verseweavers, The Opiate, Sun Magazine, little something press, and Pretty Owl Press. A recent recipient of the Lois Cranston Memorial Poetry Prize, she hosts Head for the Hills—a poetry series and open mic at the Hillsdale Library. 
• Margaret Luongo (Oxford, OH), fiction, has published two story collections — If the Heart is Lean and History of Art — with LSU Press. Her stories have appeared in Tin House, FENCE, Jane, Pushcart Prize XXVIII, Granta.com, Consequence Magazine, and elsewhere. She was awarded an Ohio Arts Council Individual Creativity Grant, the Walter E. Dakin Fellowship at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and residencies in Rhode Island and overseas.
• Hillary Moore (Seattle, WA), SAF fellow in visual art, is a children’s illustrator who works in watercolor and gouache. She is also a writer and educator. A graduate of the Scripps College studio art program with experience in sculpture, environmental art, and painting, she also earned a graduate degree in education to work in art education and creative youth development. 
• Sylvia Pollack (Seattle, WA), poetry, has written the chapbooks Letitia and Overheard, the Deaf Woman Poems, and was a Jack Straw Writer in 2019. Twice nominated for Pushcart prizes, she has published work in Floating Bridge Review, Crab Creek Review, Clover, and Antiphon, along with other journals. 
• Monique Quintana (Fresno, CA), fiction, wrote the novella Cenote City (Clash Books, 2019) and has published work in Winter Tangerine, Queen Mobs Tea House, and Acentos Review. A graduate of California State University – Fresno’s MFA program, she is a Senior Editor at Luna Luna Magazine, Fiction Editor at Five 2 One Magazine, and writes about Latinx literature at her blog, Blood Moon. 
• Susan Shepard (Portland, OR) is a journalist and writer of creative nonfiction at work on a book chronicling the rise and fall of the American strip club over the past three decades. She is proudly following in the footsteps of new journalists including Barbara Ehrenreich, Jessica Mitford, and Pamela Colloff, who have made it their mission to investigate the middle class.
• Olivia Stephens (Auburn, WA), Mona Lisa Roberts fellow in visual art, is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design and is completing her debut graphic novel, Artie and the Wolf Moon (Lerner/Graphic Universe, Spring 2021). Currently a Literary Fellow for the Tulsa Artist Fellowship, she has engaged with the Tulsa community via kids’ drawing workshops, readings, comics mentorships and charity functions. 
• Morgan Thomas (Gulf Breeze, FL), fiction, has published in The Kenyon Review Online, Electric Literature, Vice, the Ploughshares blog, and The Greensboro Review. Their work also appeared in StoryQuarterly, where they were awarded the 2019 Fiction Prize. They’ve received a Bread Loaf Work-Study Grant, a Fulbright Award, and the Penny Wilkes Scholarship in Writing and the Environment. They received their MFA from the University of Oregon. When not writing, they work to elevate indigenous Two Spirit and LGBTQ voices as the 2SLGBTQ Outreach Coordinator at the Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board.
• John Treat (Seattle, WA), June Dodge fellow in fiction, is the author of The Rise and Fall of the Yellow House, a finalist for the 2016 Lambda Prize for Gay Fiction. An MFA candidate in creative writing at Antioch College – Los Angeles, his 2018 short story “The Pond” was awarded the Christopher Hewitt Award for Fiction, and his 2019 short story “Good Humor” received a Pushcart Prize nomination.
• Ellen Welcker (Spokane, WA), SAF fellow in poetry, has published Ram Hands (Scablands Books, 2016) and The Botanical Garden (Astrophil Press, 2010) and multiple chapbooks. She has collaborated widely across genres for public performance. She holds an MFA from Goddard College and has held a reading series in her living room, volunteered as a writing teacher, and created writing-centered programming for kids and adults.
• Suze Woolf (Seattle, WA), visual art, explores a range of media from painting, paper-casting, artist books and pyrography to installation – sometimes all together. She has exhibited throughout the Northwest as well as in Utah, British Columbia, Maryland, California, Colorado, Oklahoma and Washington DC. An installation of her burned tree portraits is touring regionally until 2022. She has won grants and awards from Artist Trust, Shunpike, Entrada Institute, Zion Natural History Association, Museum of Northwest Art and San Juan Islands Museum of Art.

Residents will receive room and board, with all meals prepared by a mix of volunteers and culinary staff, and each residency session hosted by members of our steering committee or program alumni. During each session, residents are invited to “Show & Tell” from their work at a public dessert pot-luck, and visiting artist alumni will also present to residents and the community in after-dinner salons. 

“We’re honored to host our sixth year of residency — even if it’s ‘pushed back’ to 2021 — and grateful to our hard-working application jurors, steering committee, volunteers, donors, foundation supporters, and to all our neighbors in Mineral,” said Hodges. “We continue to breathe new life into this old school that houses our vision.” 

Mineral School (www.mineral-school.org) is an all-volunteer nonprofit organization and is a fiscally sponsored project of Shunpike (www.shunpike.org). Its two programs are overnight artists residencies and arts events spanning multiple genres. Mineral School has received support from Amazon Literary Partners, Sustainable Arts Foundation, and individual donors. It is a member of the Alliance of Artists Communities.