Wowza! (and congratulations)

In case you missed the announcement, cartoonist (etc.) Lynda Barry and poet/fiction writer Ocean Vuong are among the 26 MacArthur Fellows for 2019.

Known informally as the “Genius” grant, “the MacArthur Fellowship is a five-year grant to individuals who show exceptional creativity in their work and the prospect for still more in the future. The fellowship is designed to provide recipients with the flexibility to pursue their creative activities in the absence of specific obligations or reporting requirements. There are no limits on age or area of activity.” The stipend for the MacArthur Fellowship is currently set at $625,000, paid in quarterly installments over five years.

Visit the MacArthur Foundation website for more information.

go, Claudia!

We recently mentioned Washington Poetic Routes, a new poetry mapping project by Washington State Poet Laureate Claudia Castro Luna. Now we have further reason to salute Claudia: she has been named an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow, an honor which comes with significant funding for a new project, One River, A Thousand Names. Read all about it in Crosscut.

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The Ken Warfel Fellowship returns

Every two years, poetrynight invites poets who “have made substantial contributions to their poetry communities” to apply for the Ken Warfel Fellowship. Applications are open until Friday, July 1, 2016. Read the guidelines and the Call for Entries. Participate (as an audience member and in the open mic) in poetrynight on Mondays at the Bellingham Public Library. Like poetrynight on Facebook.

Ken Warfel, for whom the fellowship is named, was (among other achievements) one of the original five Alaska Flying Poets, “a group of five professors from the [Iowa Writer’s] Workshop who flew a small airplane around Alaska and the Midwest to talk to high school students about the value of learning to write well.” He was the author of three books of poetry: Fow! and Other Fingerprints, The Sunnyside Vinegar Works and A Fine Hotel. See Ken Warfel’s obituary.
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photo: Alaska Flying Poets, 1964, from left: Donald Kaufmann, Kenneth Warfel, Robert King, Edmund Skellings, Laurence Wyatt

The Ken Warfel Fellowship

Are you a poet who has made a substantial contribution to the poetry community? Are you at least 18 years of age and a three- (or more) year resident of Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, Montana or Washington? If so, get thee quick to the Poetrynight website and put in your application for The Ken Warfel Fellowship.

Ken Warfel, for whom the fellowship is named, was (among other achievements) one of the original five Alaska Flying Poets and the author of three books of poetry: Fow and Other Fingerprints, the Sunnyside Vinegar Works and A Fine Hotel.

NOTE: the application deadline has been extended to Saturday, June 21, 2014.

Ken Warfel Fellowship

What have you done for the poetry community lately? If you think you’re making a “substantial contribution,” then hasten yourself to the Ken Warfel Fellowship page over at poetrynight.org, study the requirements and send in your application for a possible $1,000 fellowship. The deadline is Sunday, April 15, 2012, so don’t tarry.

You can also learn more about the fellowship and about Ken Warfel and listen to the poetrynight podcast of the 28 February 2011 Ken Warfel tribute.
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Ken Warfel photo