Fiction Writer Arna Bontemps Hemenway Awarded the 2014 D.H. Lawrence Fellowship

 

Arna Bontemps Hemenway has been awarded the 2014 D. H. Lawrence Fellowship. He is the author of Elegy on Kinderklavier (Sarabande 2014), which was recently named a Barnes and Noble Discover Award Series pick. His fiction has appeared in A Public Space, Alaska Quarterly Review, Ecotone, FiveChapters, and The Missouri Review, among other venues. He has been the recipient of the Truman Capote Fellowship for Fiction Writing, the John C. Schupes Fellowship for Fiction Writing, and, at the Sewanee Writers' Conference, has served as the Peter Taylor Scholar of Fiction Writing. Later this summer he will be a Fiction Fellow at the Bread Loaf Writing Conference. He holds an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and is currently Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Baylor University. 

Elegy on Kinderklavier was praised by The Library Journal as a debut collection that “shows a depth of emotion and intensity that carries the reader from start to finish. These haunting stories deserve a wide audience.”

The D.H. Lawrence Fellowship is given each year to an emerging writer of poetry or prose with one book in print or at press. Originally established to sustain a living tradition of artistic creation in a place the late English writer so loved, the D.H. Lawrence Fellowship is the most prestigious of the Taos Summer Writers’ Conference awards and scholarships. When informed of the his award, Hemenway said, “I think conferences like Taos are really important for people to get a chance to work with authors like Pam Houston, Justin St. Germain, or Kristen-Paige Madonia (as the genre-case may be), for instance. Oftentimes having writers with such great insight talking about your work can really open up new ways of improving over the rest of the year. They can be really helpful directional beacons on the dark sea of those months when you're working by yourself.”

Past recipients of the fellowship include: Matthew Pitt of St. Louis, MO (2013); Kristen-Paige Madonia of Charlottesville, VA (2012); Darlin' Neal of Orlando, FL (2011); Andrew Kozma of Houston, TX (2010); Merrill Feitell (2009); Nancy Pagh of Bellingham, WA (2008); Philip Cioffari (2007); Kelly Magee of Columbus, OH (2006); Carl Marcum of Chicago, IL (2005); Lisa Goett of Taos, NM (2004); Sarah Jane Smith of Miami, FL (2003); Andrea Hollander Budy of Mountain View, AK (2002); Pamela Gemin of Oshkosh, WI (2001); and Charlotte Holmes of State College, PA (2000).