Join us at Intermedia Arts for a spectacular evening of new writing from seven of the Twin Cities’ most talented emerging writers. The SASE/Jerome Celebration honors the passion and dedication of new and emerging writers, and brings to a close our 2008 grant year. Our goal is to provide financial assistance, professional encouragement, and recognition to a culturally and socio-economically diverse group of literary artists, in an effort to strengthen and support Minnesota's literary community.
Featuring 2008 Grant Recipients:
DHANA-MARIE BRANTON is a Minneapolis-based creative nonfiction writer. She will return to the New York State Writers Institute to study with Phillip Lopate. A native Chicagoan, Dhana-Marie is also an award-winning playwright whose work has been produced in Chicago and New York City.
CHARLES CONLEY is a graduate of the University of Minnesota’s MFA in Creative Writing program. He lives in Minneapolis and will use the SASE/Jerome grant to complete his short story collection.
ELISSA ELLIOTT received a bachelor’s degree in biological sciences and her master’s in education from UCLA. Her first novel will be published by Bantam Books in the Fall of 2008. Her work has appeared in The Baltimore Review, and her book reviews have been printed in Books & Culture, Paste Magazine and Elle. She is a former winner of the Loft Mentor Series and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her first screenplay is scheduled to begin filming in the Summer of 2008. She’s been a finalist for the McKnight Screenwriters Fellowship and a semi-finalist for the Nicholl Screenwriters Fellowship. She lives in Rochester with her husband.
LAURA FLYNN was born and raised in San Francisco, California. She is the author of Swallow the Ocean, a memoir of growing up in the face of her mother’s catastrophic mental illness, published by Counterpoint Press in February 2008. She received her BA from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut and her MFA in creative writing from the University of Minnesota, where she served as the inaugural fellow in the Scribe for Human Rights Project, jointly sponsored by the Human Rights and the Creative Writing Programs at the University of Minnesota. She has been an activist and human rights advocate all her adult life. She lived in Haiti from 1994-2000 and remains deeply involved in the struggle for democracy and human dignity in that country. She is the editor of Eyes of the Heart: Seeking a Path for the Poor in the Age of Globalization by Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Common Courage Press, 2000. She currently teaches editing at the University of Minnesota, and lives in Minneapolis with her husband, poet Mike Rollin.
JOHN MEDEIROS is a writer living in Minneapolis. His work has appeared in Water~Stone, Gulf Coast; Willow Springs; Gents, Badboys and Barbarians: An Anthology of New Gay Male Poetry; Evergreen Chronicles; Christopher Street; Chiron Review; and Writers Against War. He is the recipient of a Minnesota State Arts Board grant; Gulf Coast's First Place Nonfiction Award; and the Blacklock Nature Sanctuary Fellowship for Emerging Artists. He is a recent graduate of Hamline University, where his memoir Self, Divided was awarded the Outstanding Creative Nonfiction Thesis of the Year, and his work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He is currently the Writer-in-Residence at the Banfill-Locke Center for the Arts in Fridley, Minnesota.
RACHEL MORITZ received her MFA from the University of Minnesota. Her poetry chapbook, The Winchester Monologues, won the 2005 New Michigan Press Competition. Her work has been recently published or is forthcoming in Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Five Fingers Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, Indiana Review and other journals. She edits WinteRed Press, a publisher of poetry chaplets and broadsides. She will use her SASE/Jerome grant to pursue a mentorship with an established poet and to work on her poetry manuscript.
MATT RASMUSSEN received a bachelor’s degree from Gustavus Adolphus College and a master’s degree in creative writing from Emerson College. He is a former Peace Corps Volunteer (Papua New Guinea ’99-‘01) and participant in the Loft Mentor Series (’06-’07). His poetry has been recently published or is forthcoming in Gulf Coast, Cimmaron Review, Passages North, Dislocate, New York Quarterly, LIT, and What Light: This Week’s Poem at mnartists.org. He currently lives in Robbinsdale and teaches at Gustavus Adolphus College and Rasmussen College. His chapbook, Fingergun, is available from Kitchen Press.
The SASE/Jerome Awards, presented by Intermedia Arts, are supported by the Jerome Foundation.