Contact:
Sharon Oard Warner, 505-277-6248
Kurt Gutjahr, 505-277-6155
Laurie Mellas-Ramirez, 505-277-5915

June 4, 2002

UNM TAOS SUMMER WRITERS' CONFERENCE ANNOUNCES AWARDS

The University of New Mexico Taos Summer Writers' Conference has announced the recipients of the D. H. Lawrence Fellowship, four scholarships in fiction and poetry and the new Taos Resident Writer Award.

Andrea Hollander Budy, writer-in-residence at Lyon College in Batesville, Arkansas, has received the D. H. Lawrence Fellowship.

This year's scholarship recipients in fiction and poetry come from across the country. They are: Abby Mims, Hollywood, Calif.; Nina Ronstadt, San Diego, Calif.; Lynn Luoma, Brunswick, Ohio; and Madelyn Garner, Denver, Colo. Each will receive the cost of tuition to one writing workshop at the conference as part of the award.

This year's Taos Resident Writer Award is to be shared by Kyra Ryan and Meisha Cantú, both of Taos, NM. The award was recently established to provide writers in the Taos area an opportunity to participate in the conference free of charge. Ryan is a fiction writer who received her MFA from Colorado State University in 1999. Cantú is a poet who has studied for the past two and a half years at the College of Santa Fe.

Now in its fourth year, the Taos Summer Writers' Conference will be held July 13-19 at the Sagebrush Inn Conference Center in Taos.

Budy is the author of "House Without a Dreamer" (Story Line Press, 1993), a collection of poems that received the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize, and most recently "The Other Life" (Story Line Press, 2001). She joins past recipients Pamela Gemin (2001) and Charlotte Holmes (2000) as the D. H. Lawrence Fellow at the conference. Budy will attend a weekly writing workshop, participate in conference activities and present a formal reading of her work.

From its first year in 1999, the Taos Summer Writers' Conference has increased support to registrants by offering various awards including merit-based scholarships, the D. H. Lawrence Fellowship, and now the Taos Resident Writer Award.

The D. H. Lawrence Fellowship, originally established in 1958 to sustain a living tradition of artistic creation at the nearby D. H. Lawrence Ranch, was reinstated in modified form in 2000 as a part of the conference. The first Taos Resident Writer Award was added this year, thanks in large part to the generous support of participant Leo Love.

The Taos Summer Writers' Conference is sponsored by the UNM College of Arts and Sciences. Each year more than 120 conference participants gather at the Sagebrush Inn Conference Center in Taos, to participate in writing workshops, public readings, writers' panels, and special events.

This year's faculty of award-winning poets, writers and journalists, include Joseph Skibell, Pam Houston, Laurie Kutchins, Jonis Agee, Brent Spencer and Pat Mora.

For more information on the conference, including a list of events open to the public, visit www.unm.edu/-taosconf.

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Conference Contacts
Sharon Oard Warner
277-6248 (W), 890-1421 (H)
swarner@unm.edu
--Author of Deep in the Heart (novel)
--Associate Professor of English, University of New Mexico
--Director, Creative Writing Program, UNM
--Director, Taos Summer Writers' Conference


Press Contact
Laurie Mellas-Ramirez
277-5915 (W)
lmellas@unm.edu
--Senior Public Affairs Representative, UNM

2002 Faculty available for comment/interview
Gregory Martin
277-6145 (W), 265-5471 (H)
gmartin@unm.edu
--Author of Mountain City (memoir)
--Assistant Professor of English, University of New Mexico
--2002 Taos workshop: Memoir

Daniel Mueller
277-6120 (W), 878-9823 (H)
dmueller@unm.edu
--Author of How Animals Mate (stories)
--Assistant Professor of English, University of New Mexico
--2002 Taos workshop: Autobiographical Fiction

Alison Hawthorne Deming
520-626-5880 (W), 520-622-0991 (H)
aldeming@aol.com
--Author of The Edges of the Civilized World, Writing the Sacred Into the Real, and Temporary Homelands (non-fiction)
--Director, University of Arizona Poetry Center
--2002 Taos workshop: Travel Writing

 

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The University of New Mexico
Public Affairs Department
Hodgin Hall, 2nd floor
Albuquerque, NM 87131-0011
Telephone: (505) 277-5813
Fax: (505) 277-1981