Participant News
Former Conference participant Claire Rooney's first novel, As Far as Far Enough, will be released in October of 2008.
In October, 2007,
Jan Irvin was awarded Honorable Mention in the Tennessee Writers Alliance Fiction Contest and she was invited to read in Nashville. She also just made her first sale of a story - to the
Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine.
Sandra O'Briant has contributed to the anthology, What Wildness is This: Women Write About the Southwest (Dutton's Brentwood Books), which was launched Saturday, March 24, 2007. The book celebrates women's experiences in the landscapes of the Southwest. This collection demonstrates and illuminates the rich diversity of environments of the Southwest, as well as the extraordinary range of women's voices and women's experiences of the land.
Included among the nearly one hundred contributors to the anthology are widely-recognized writers such as Terry Tempest Williams, Barbara Kingsolver, Joy Harjo, and Leslie Marmon Silko, as well as several important new voices.
Natalie Vanderbilt has recently published her book, The Most Secret Window, to critical acclaim. Natalie worked on the verse novel at the Taos Conference with faculty member, poet and author Robert McDowell, who wrote the introduction. You can find more about the book, including excerpts, reviews, and the full text of the introduction at Natalie Vanderbilt's website.
Eleni Bastea, 2003 Taos SWC participant, has won one of three prizes awarded by the Navarino short story competition for a story she submitted in Greek, "The High Heels." The newly organized Navarino competition is intended to encourage work in Greek to be used for a textbook in modern Greek at Dartmouth and other Modern Greek Programs in the US. Eleni’s story will be published in their reader. In 2003, when Eleni took Taos SWC courses with Sandra Scofield and Diane Thiel, "The High Heels" was one of the stories she wrote as a quick assignment. She then "translated" it in Greek and expanded it, thinking of the context of the language classroom, and then came the good news. Congratulations, Eleni!
Laurel Bastian , the Taos Resident Award
winner in 2005 has had a poem accepted by Margie:
The American Journal of Poetry. This get between 30,000
and 40,000 submissions and take less than 1%, so Laurel's accomplishment
is impressive.
Leslie Gee , 2005 Native Writer Award winner, has been awarded the $20,000 ABC/Disney Talent Development Scholarship Grant to develop an individual film project She will use this grant in 2006 under the mentorship of experienced professionals from ABC/Disney studios. Gee, who is of Caddo/Delaware/Choctaw descent, received her BFA in Creative Writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts and attended IAIA's 2005 Summer Film and Television Workshop, sponsored by ABC/Disney, the Kellogg Foundation, and the National Museum of the American Indian.
Janet Irvin’s story accepted for publication
2005 Leo Love Fiction Merit Scholar Janet Irvin has had a story accepted for publication. “The Scent of Oranges,” which she workshopped at the 2005 Taos Conference, has been accepted for publication in the winter issue of Oyez Review. She writes, “I am very happy and encouraged to keep on writing.”
Caroline Tompkins’ essay selected
Caroline Tompkins’ essay “Spelling Bee,” which first appeared in the Gettysburg Review, has been selected as a Notable Essay in the Best American Essays of 2005. Carolyn was a student in Greg Martin’s memoir workshop at the 2002 Taos Conference.
News from multi-time Taos participants Scott Wiggerman and David Meischen
Scott Wiggerman’s poetry continues to be widely published, including one poem in a new anthology called In the Arms of Words: Poems for Tsunami Relief, and seven poems on the Other Voices International Poetry site. In July 2005, he and David Meischen published the 2006 Texas Poetry Calendar, through their Dos Gatos Press.
