GRETA WROLSTAD TRAVEL AWARD
2008 WINNER ANNOUNCED
The Poetry Faculty of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Montana is pleased to announce that the winner of the third annual Greta Wrolstad Travel Award is Lucas Farrell (MFA '08). Lucas will receive $1000 to support a collaborative project based in Inuvik, Northwest Territories.
Lucas’s proposal focuses on a six-week project involving research and documentation in and along the MacKenzie River Delta in the Northwest Territories, in collaboration with artist Louisa Conrad and biologist Louie Porta. The project will combine ecosystem research and visual and textual documentation, with the anticipated aim of producing both an artist book and a collection of poetry. Lucas’s proposal matches the devotion and spirit with which the Greta Wrolstad Travel Award was established in 2005. As an extension of Greta’s legacy, the Award recognizes the importance of further developing and enriching the individual’s engagement in his or her creative life and work. Greta was an inquisitive and adventurous spirit, who found absolute value in new experiences and landscapes and their impact on the evolution of the mind and one’s art. Lucas’s proposal to spend time in the Northwest Territories embodies these ideals.
We would like to extend our gratitude to everyone that applied this year. The applications were outstanding, and it was a great honor to consider each and every one of your project proposals. We wish you all the best of luck in pursuing your respective projects and plans, and especially with your continued engagement in writing, reading and traveling. For those of you returning to the MFA program for the 2008-2009 academic year, the Creative Writing program will be considering applications for the fourth annual Travel Award in the Spring of 2009.
The Greta Wrolstad Travel Award was established in 2005, in memory of Greta Wrolstad, a poet in the MFA program from 2004-2005, who passed away on August 9, 2005 at the age of twenty-four. The award is granted to an outstanding poet in the first or second year of the MFA program in the Creative Writing Program at The University of Montana, for support of travel during the summer or academic year to a writing workshop, conference, or residency in the U.S. or abroad. The award consists of a prize of $1000.00.
Previous winners include Trina Burke (2007) and Devon Wootten (2006).
While in the program at Montana, Greta Wrolstad was awarded a Poetry Fellowship, served as the poetry co-editor of CutBank and attended the 2005 Summer Literary Seminar in St. Petersburg, Russia, on a scholarship awarded by Fence Books; the Greta Wrolstad Scholarship for Young Poets was subsequently created in her honor. Poems from her manuscript, Notes on Sea and Shore, have appeared in A Public Space, Black Warrior Review, The Canary, Octopus Magazine, and have been featured in the Best New Poets 2007 and Pushcart Prize XXXII anthologies. Greta was born on April 26th, 1981.
Read four of Greta's poems in the 10th issue of Octopus Magazine, here.
Read her poem "The Clearing" in the 4th issue of A Public Space, here.
Read her poem "Fontaine de Vaucluse" and read about the the Greta Wrolstad Scholarship for Young Poets, offered by the Summer Literary Seminars-Russia, here