The University of New Mexico

NEWS RELEASE


Media Contact: Sari Krosinsky, 277-1593, michal@unm.edu

January 5, 2007

UNM Graduate Student Wins Top National Honor for Poets
Lisa Gill Receives $20,000 NEA Fellowship

University of New Mexico graduate student Lisa Gill recently received one of the nation’s top awards for poets – the National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship in Poetry. She is one of 50 selected from a pool of 1,056 applications to receive this two-year, $20,000 fellowship. She was chosen based on poems from her first book, “Red as a Lotus.”

Gill’s plans include a two book project that will take her to Chiapas. Another important aspect of the fellowship is that the financial support will allow Gill, who has been subsisting on Supplemental Security Income, or SSI, “to receive money for an ability instead of a disability,” she said. "What that means to me is dignity."

Gill joined UNM’s master of fine arts in creative writing program in fall 2006. She received a bachelor’s in university studies from UNM in 1993. Currently living in Moriarty, N.M., she has long been active in New Mexico arts.

Some of her current projects include Unicycle Imprint, a chapbook series for writers with disabilities to be published through Destructible Heart Press; Tributaries, a tri-city art gallery; Line-Break, a poetry segment on KUNM; and Donkey Journal, a literary magazine published by Albuquerque’s Donkey Gallery. Gill’s second book, “Mortar and Pestle,” which explores her reaction to being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, was recently released from New Rivers Press.

The NEA, established by Congress in 1965, is a public agency dedicated to supporting excellence in the arts, bringing the arts to all Americans and providing leadership in arts education. The endowment awards Literature Fellowships to invest in American creativity, encourage the production of new work and allow writers the time and means to write.


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