Congratulations to our 2010 SASE/Jerome Grant Winners!

Congratulations to our 2010 SASE/Jerome Grant Winners!

BRIAN LAIDLAW ($3,000) is a poet and folk songwriter from Northern California.  After a few years of touring and rambling, he is currently working toward an M.F.A. in poetry at the University of Minnesota.  Brian has released several musical albums, including Fond Memories of Sound, with Garagista records, and his song lyrics have appeared in American Songwriter Magazine.  He was also the recipient of the 2009 Gesell Award for Poetry and a finalist for the 2010 Loft Mentor Series.  Most recently, he received the inaugural Book Arts Fellowship from the University of Minnesota, and will be releasing an artist book with Deer Let Loose Press in 2010.

MICHELE MICKLEWRIGHT ($2,500) Michele Micklewright, writer, spiritual director, chaplain and mother has spent many years engaged with her community, accompanying members as they face transition and loss. Her poetry, reflections and essays have been used in ministry settings. Her commitment has been centered in parishes, shelters, hospice, hospital and long-term care facilities in Latin America and in the States. She engages common human experience, the written word and theological reflection in dialogue to seek understanding. She wrestles with questions about how one can seek to live a life of integrity in a world where structures often forget the most vulnerable in society. She attempts to give image and form to those areas of our world that remain hidden. Facing her own limitations and brokenness, she wrestles with redefining what it means to seek wholeness. She has published in Vision, Maryknoll In-Touch, Chaplaincy Today. She is working on a spiritual memoir.

MARGIE NEWMAN ($2,000) Margie Newman's publications include Jewish Currents, Outlook and Dislocate. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Minnesota.  She was a winner of the Loft Shabo Award and the Loft Mentorship Series, and has received a University of Minnesota Travel Study Fellowship and a grant from the Howard Brin Jewish Arts Endowment.  She is currently at work on a memoir.  She lives in St. Paul with her husband David Unowsky and son Owen.

MIKE ROLLIN ($2,000) Mike Rollin has worked as an interpreter and community organizer, and as a writing instructor at the University of Minnesota, the College of St. Catherine, and the Loft.  He received a MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Minnesota, was a Loft Mentor Series winner in poetry, and has been nominated for a Puschcart Prize. His poems have appeared in Puerto del Sol, Bombay Gin, Water~Stone, Xcp: Streetnotes, Northwest Review, mnartists.org, and elsewhere.  He lives in Minneapolis with his wife, author Laura Flynn, and children Samantha and Niko.


ERIC VROOMAN ($3,500) Eric Vrooman’s short fiction has appeared in The Kenyon Review, Minnesota Monthly, The Cream City Review, Passages North, Monkeybicycle, Ninth Letter, and elsewhere. He has taught creative writing at Macalester College, Tulane University, Gustavus Adolphus College, and The Loft Literary Center.

STEPHANIE WATSON ($2,775) published her debut book, Elvis & Olive, a middle-grade novel, with Scholastic Press. The book was named a 2008 Junior Library Book selection and a Washington Post Book of the Week. The sequel, Elvis & Olive: Super Detectives will be on store shelves in July of 2010. In March of 2009, Stephanie created Life is Life, an online serial story in words and pictures. A groundbreaking storytelling experiment, Life is Life has drawn online readers from over 50 countries. A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, Stephanie Watson grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota and now lives across the wide Mississippi in St. Paul. In addition to writing fiction, she teaches at the Loft Literary Center and runs a web copywriting agency called PlumLines.

Congratulations to our 2010 SASE/Jerome Finalists!

BRIAN FARREY received his MFA in Creative Writing at Hamline University in 2008, where his novel, CHASERS, was recognized as Outstanding Fiction Thesis. He is currently the acquiring editor for Flux, the young adult imprint for Llewellyn Worldwide. His debut YA novel is forthcoming from Simon Pulse in 2011.

KATE HOPPER holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Minnesota. Her writing has appeared in Brevity, Literary Mama, mamazine, MotherVerse, and The New York Times online. She is working on two books: Ready for Air, a memoir about learning to live with uncertainty in the wake of her daughter’s premature birth; and Mother Words: A Writing Guide for Mothers. Her next book, In the Arms of Saint Vincent, will be based on life-history research she conducted in San Vicente, Costa Rica. She teaches creative writing online and at The Loft Literary Center and writes about reading, writing, teaching and motherhood on her blog, Mother Words: Mothers Who Write. She is Literary Reflections co-editor at Literary Mama.



JOHN JODZIO is a winner of the Loft-McKnight Fellowship.  His stories have appeared in One Story, Barrelhouse, Opium, The Florida Review and various other places in print and online.  A collection of his short fiction, “If You Lived Here, You’d Already Be Home” will be published by Replacement Press in March 2010.



JOAN MADEA TRYGG thinks her writing is a natural result of her life entanglement with books--as a reader and for almost twenty years, as a bookseller.  She earned her MFA at Hamline University in 2005, and received the Outstanding Thesis in Creative Nonfiction Award.  Her essays have been published in the Journal of the Asian American Renaissance, and in the anthology, Cheers to Muses: Contemporary Works by Asian American Women.  She is Sansei and lives in St. Paul.



JULES NYQUIST is a poet experimenting with form, sound and performance.  She also writes plays and memoir, teaches at the Loft Literary Center, has interviewed hundreds of authors on the radio and leads independent writing workshops.  She earned her MFA in Poetry from Bennington College, Vermont and lives in Minneapolis.


KEVIN O’ROURKE is originally from the Philadelphia suburbs.  After a stint in New York working in publishing, he moved to Minneapolis in 2007.  He currently teaches creative writing and is at work on his first collection of poetry.  He is a contributor to 300 Reviews and has work forthcoming in Tammy.

This year, we received 105 grant applications, which were narrowed down to our 12 finalists by three community judges: Elissa Elliott, Kathryn Kysar and Anna George Meek. THANK YOU!


DON'T MISS IT!
4th Annual SASE/Jerome Celebration!
Saturday, February 20th
7PM at Intermedia Arts
$5 Suggested Donation; No one turned away!
Everyone Welcome.