2015 Residents Announced!

Mineral School launches inaugural year of artist residencies

12 writers and three volunteer chefs spend summer creating literature and community in Mineral

Through a competitive process that drew 72 applicants from throughout the United States as well as Canada and the UK, a panel of five Northwest poets and prose writers have blindly selected 12 talented literary writers who will come live and work in Mineral this summer, advancing their work in poetry, memoir, and fiction during June, July, and August. 

This summer’s writing residents include three June Dodge Fellows, a program which fully funds three Northwest writers. This year’s fellowships were made available to writers from the Northwest (Alaska, Montana, Idaho, Oregon, or Washington). Additionally, nine other writers and poets will attend residency. The summer resident community will be geographically diverse while offering a nod to the Northwest: Mineral School will host six writers from Seattle, two from San Francisco, two from Oregon, one from New York, and one from Michigan.

June Dodge Fellows include:

• Jane Wong (Seattle), June Dodge fellow in poetry, a PhD candidate at the University of Washington focusing on Asian American poetry, who is at work on an experimental collection exploring her mother’s experiences during China’s Cultural Revolution and other societal shifts. This is her first residency.
• Gretchen Schrafft (Corvallis, OR), June Dodge fellow in fiction, a teacher and emerging author of short fiction completing a collection called Working for the Mystic, which pits characters’ varying belief systems against confusing modern times and situations.
• Maxim Loskutoff (Portland), June Dodge fellow in fiction, a published author and graduate of NYU Veteran’s Writing Fellow program, redrafting a novel set in rural Montana. His work is partially inspired by the Unabomber’s capture and informed by the perceived and real conflicts between man and nature.

Writing residents include:

• Kirsten Lunstrum (Seattle), fiction, a full-time teacher and parent seeking time and space to complete revisions of a short story collection, and who admires Alice Munro’s work.
• Susan Meyers (Seattle), fiction/nonfiction, director of the Seattle University creative writing program and who is working on both a historical novel and essays about migration in the U.S. and Mexico.
• Regina Mullen (New York), fiction, a published essayist and poet who is currently an MFA candidate at Sarah Lawrence College and working on her first novel.
• Hanae Jonas (Michigan), poetry, currently an MFA candidate at the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ program and whose work has appeared in Sixth Finch, DIAGRAM, and BOATT.
• Julie Tranchina (San Francisco), poetry, who is completing a new collection of poems organized around concepts of time and who takes inspiration from West Coast language poets such as Ron Silliman.
• Wendy Call (Seattle), literary nonfiction, who will spend days in Mt. Rainier National Park gathering multimedia material and field notes for her work exploring neighborhood and nature in the Northwest.
• Amanda Castleman (Seattle), literary nonfiction, a former wilderness guide and prize-winning travel journalist who grew up in a Cascade logging town, at work on a narrative piece about her return to the Northwest from points abroad in the wake of a failed relationship.
• Stephanie Kuehnert Lewis (Seattle), fiction/nonfiction, a published author of two young adult novels at work on a zine-style coming of age memoir informed by pathos and Riot Grrl rock.
• Janine Kovac (San Francisco), literary nonfiction, a former ballerina and oft-published essayist and literary organizer taking time out from involvements in festivals and 501c3s to reconnect with her memoir.

“We have a bold goal to make Mineral School a mountainside arts oasis in the shadow of Mt. Rainier, a place where visiting literary artists—and, in the future, visual and performing artists—will work in studio settings, then connect as they wish over healthy meals and at leisure, sharing ideas and perspectives with one another and the community,” stated Jane Hodges, president of Mineral School’s board. “We’re honored to host our first residents this summer, and grateful to our volunteer culinary team. We will breathe new life into the 1947 school that is the backdrop for this vision, while sharing this process with the community.”