DATE CHANGE! Join us on Wednesday, August 21 at 6pm Alaska time for Live from Storyknife featuring August’s writers in residence. The session will be live on Zoom and the recording will be posted on this page after the reading.
Rachel Blume is a mom and writer from the Texas Gulf Coast pursuing her MFA in Interior Alaska. With a focus in fiction, her work has appeared in Flora Fiction, Glass Mountain, Continue the Voice, and others.
Melisa Casumbal-Salazar is the child of post-1965 Tagalog-Ilokano migrants. Find her poetry in Epiphany, Hot Pink & the Nightboat anthology Permanent Record. Their poetry collection-in-progress is titled amihan & dagat eat kamayaan / the north wind & ocean eat with their hands. She’s been in queer Filipinx community since Prince stopped touring with The Revolution.
Elaine Elinson is coauthor of the prize-winning “Wherever There’s a Fight: How Runaway Slaves, Suffragists, Immigrants, Strikers, and Poets Shaped Civil Liberties in California.” A former reporter with Pacific News Service and editor of the ACLU News, Elinson’s work has appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Nation, Ms. And elsewhere.
Karolina Letunova grew up in Western Siberia. She has an MFA from the University of Michigan, where she was a Rackam Merit Fellow and a 2020-2021 Zell Postgraduate Fellow. Her work appears or is forthcoming in AGNI, The Cincinnati Review, The Kenyon Review, The Threepenny Review, among others. Her short stories and novel-in-progress have been recognized with fellowships, grants, and residencies from the California Arts Council, Bread Loaf-Rona Jaffe, The de Groot Foundation, Ragdale, VCCA, Good Hart Artist Residency, and Monson Arts.
Caron Levis (MFA; LMSW) is the author of several star reviewed and award winning picture books including the Feeling-Friends collection: Mighty Muddy Us, Feathers Together, This Way, Charlie and Ida, Always which the New York Times Book Review calls, “an example of children’s books at their best.” Other titles include: Stop That Yawn! and Mama’s Work Shoes. She is the Coordinator and a Professor for The New School’s Writing for Children/YA MFA program. Caron uses a blend of drama and writing to create interactive SEL/literacy skills workshops for children and adults. Writing short things takes her a long time. Caron is so grateful to Storyknife for inviting her to migrate from NYC to the wonder of Homer. www.caronlevis.com
Doreen Oliver is an actor, writer, and speaker. Her award-winning solo show, EVERYTHING IS FINE UNTIL IT’S NOT, broke a record for the fastest sell-out in the NY Fringe Festival’s 20-year history. A 2022 PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow, Doreen’s essays about race, autism, and life’s contradictions have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Audible, The Root, The Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. She is a graduate of Yale University, the Atlantic Theater Company’s Acting Conservatory, and Stanford Graduate School of Business. www.doreenoliver.com
It’s mid-July at Storyknife. This means that everything is very very green and the fireweed is fixing to bloom at any moment. It also means that we’re very very busy.
First of all, the application period is open for the 2025 residency season. In a separate email, I’ll explain how the adjudication process works which will give all of you a peek into what a labor of love Storyknife is. It takes a community of amazing women to put it all together.
Second, I hope you all have made space in your calendar for Live from Storyknife on Thursday, July 18 at 6pm Alaska Time. The bios for this month’s amazing readers are live and the Zoom link will be live on Thursday here . For those of you might miss it (because it’s late on the east coast), there will be a recording posted on the same page.
Finally, I wanted to briefly talk about fundraising. Storyknife is 54% toward meeting its 2024 fundraising goal. Donating money to an organization like Storyknife isn’t about instant gratification. It’s not like going to a performance the night after you donated to a ballet troupe. Instead, in six months or a year, you get to hold Jodi Savage’s The Death of a Jaybird: Essays on Mothers and Daughters and the Things They Leave Behind or Renata Golden’s Mountain Time: A Field Guide to Astonishment or Sara Daniel Rivera’s The Blue Mimes and sink into the artistry of their words on the page.
When you donate to Storyknife, you change the narrative. You support the vision of an incredible diverse group of women writers. You support relationships between women writers that build each other up. You put a payment forward toward a future when the women of Storyknife change the way you see the world, offer you stories you couldn’t have imagined, give you hope for healing and for building.
This may be a challenging year for tiny nonprofits like Storyknife to get your attention. It might seem more expedient to give to large organizations who can afford glossy mailers and advertisements on social media. I hoping that you’ll remember that a residency at Storyknife transforms lives. That you can be the person who makes that possible for a woman writer, who makes it possible for her to believe her words are important.
Join us on Thursday, July 18 at 6pm Alaska time for Live from Storyknife featuring July’s writers in residence. The session will be live on Zoom and the recording will be posted on this page after the reading.
A Chicanx writer and educator, Dr. Victoria Bañales is the founder and editor of Journal X, a social justice literary arts magazine. Her writing has been published in various journals and anthologies. She holds a Ph.D. in Literature and Feminist Studies from the University of California-Santa Cruz. More at vickybanales.com.
Jan Beatty’s eighth book, Dragstripping, is forthcoming (University of Pittsburgh Press, September, 2024). Her memoir, American Bastard, won the Red Hen Nonfiction Award. Recent books include The Body Wars and a chapbook, Skydog (Lefty Blondie Press, 2022). Beatty worked as a waitress, abortion counselor, and in maximum security prisons. www.janbeatty.com
Susan Nguyen’s debut poetry collection Dear Diaspora won the 2020 Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry, an Outstanding Achievement Award from the Association of Asian American Studies, and a New Mexico-Arizona Book Award. She likes nature, crafts, and starting a new hobby every other week. She lives in Arizona.
Dominica Phetteplace is a writer and math tutor from the San Francisco Bay Area. Her honors include two Pushcart Prizes, a Rona Jaffe Award and fellowships from MacDowell, Djerassi and Tin House.
Sierra Rosetta (she/her) is an Indigenous playwright and theatre artist currently based in Chicago, Illinois. Her first full-length play, FROM THE OLD WOOD FOREST, was selected by Yale Indigenous Performing Arts Program as the Young Native Playwright winner in 2024.
Philadelphia native, victoria stitt is currently thinking about palimpsests, journeys home, and, most recently, lupines. Their poems have been nominated for Best New Poetry, Best of the Net, and have appeared in Poetry Daily, the Michigan Quarterly Review, and others. victoria received their MFA in Creative Writing from Warren Wilson College and teaches English in New Jersey.
Jan Beatty: Pink Poetry Prize, “If You Slice the Moon,” “Miraculous,” “Leaving Santa Fe,” “Junkie,” “I Ran Into Water,” “Scarline,” Great River Review, Issue 70, Spring 2024.
Kimberly Blaeser: Ancient Light, University of Arizona Press, January 2024.
Kersten Christianson: “The Challenge Is to Write Beauty Without Using the Word Beautiful,” Last Stanza Poetry Journal, Issue #14, Fall 2023.
Kersten Christianson: “Slice the Fruit Thin,” “Autumnal,” and “New Year Redux,” Sheila-Na-Gig, Volume 8.2, Winter 2023.
Kersten Christianson: “If Not Glitter, If Not Gold,” The Bluebird Word, December 2023/January 2024.
Kersten Christianson: “I Never Knew,” Sheila-Na-Gig, Volume 8.3, Spring 2024.
Kersten Christianson: “Concentric,” San Pedro River Review, Vol. 16, #1, Spring 2024.
Kersten Christianson: “Ode to the Coffee Grinder, My One True Love,” and “Woman Taken by the Wind,” Tidal Echoes, 2024 Edition.
Kersten Christianson: “Oceanic,” Three Hearts: An Anthology of Cephalopod Poetry, World Enough Writers, Spring 2024.
Lydi Conklin: “Last Time We Spoke,” The Yale Review, June 2024.
Ann Fisher-Wirth: Into the Chalice of Your Thoughts (with photographs by Wilfried Raussert; poems translated into Spanish by the Women in Translation group), University of Guadalajara Press, December 2023.
Ann Fisher-Wirth: “The Here of Here,” Terrain.org, March 2024.
Ann Fisher-Wirth: “‘Tis a Consummation,” Braving the Body, ed. Nicole Callihan, Pichchenda Bao, and Jennifer Franklin, Small Harbor Publishing, 2024.
Ann Fisher-Wirth: “Catalpa,” “Winter Day on the Whirlpool Trails,” “Val Corsaglia,” and “Sweetgum Country,” Poets for Science (online), ed. David Hassler, February 2024.
Sandra Jackson-Opoku: “African Artifacts on a Shelf of Antiquities, the British Museum, Great Russell Street, London,” Adi Magazine, Issue 18: Omens – Spirits & Specters, Feb 2024.
Sandra Jackson-Opoku: “In the Overseas,” Issue 5: About Place Journal, Strange Wests, June 2024.
Arielle Taitano Lowe: Ocean Mother, University of Guam Press, March 02, 2024.
Maryann Lesert: Land Marks, She Writes Press, April 16, 2024.
Kim Steutermann Rogers: “Mrs. Wilcox,” Lost Balloon, October 11, 2024.
Kim Steutermann Rogers: “Last Rites,” Reckon Review, September 25, 2024
Taté Walker: “Colonialism Ate My Body,” Good Eats: 32 Writers on Eating Ethically, NYU Press, January 2024.
Taté Walker: “The Desert is Abundant With Blessings,” Little Somethings Press , Issue 6, June 2024.
Taté Walker: “Mark Tilsen: ‘It Ain’t Over Til We’re Smoking Cigars on the Drill Pad’,” Studies in American Indian Literatures 35:3-4, University of Nebraska Press, Fall/Winter 2023.
Lucy Wang: “Mise En Place,” SUNY Potsdam, Sept 2023.
Lucy Wang: “Book Me!,” PlayGround Experiment Faces of America Festival #5, Marjorie S Dean Little Theater, NYC Nov 18, 2023.
Lucy Wang: “Mia Sees A Sign,” Benchmark Education, Jan 2024.
Lucy Wang: “Two Artists Trying to Pay Their Bill,” American School of Dubai, Dubai, UAE, Feb 21-22, 2024.
Lucy Wang: Excerpts from “Ode to Joy, ” LaMaMa Theater, Feb 29, 2024.
Lucy Wang: “Junior Moment,” Gi60 International Theater Festival, The Tank, NYC, May 16-19, 2024.
Join us on Thursday, June 20 at 6pm Alaska time for Live from Storyknife featuring June’s writers in residence. The session will be live on Zoom and the recording will be posted on this page after the reading.
Ashunda is a Black feminist multidisciplinary artist with creative work in film, poetry, archiving and photography. She loves hot water cornbread, the ocean, star Sirius and obscure cinema. Learn more at ashunda.com
Lisa Bird-Wilson is a Saskatchewan Métis and Cree writer whose award-winning novel, Probably Ruby, was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award and the Amazon First Novel Award. Lisa lives in Saskatoon and is the CEO of the Gabriel Dumont Institute, Canada’s first Métis post-secondary education and cultural institute.
Christina Chiu is the author of Beauty and Troublemaker and Other Saints, and the recipient of the James Alan McPherson Award and the Asian American Literary Award. Her stories appear in Tin House, The New Guard, NextTribe, Electric Literature, Charlie Chan is Dead 2, Washington Square, The McGuffin.
Wiley Wei-Chiun Ho writes short stories, personal essays, and memoir. Her work has appeared in magazines, journals, and anthologies. A member of the Asian Canadian Writers’ Workshop, Wiley is working on her first book. When dodging the desk, she is most likely forest bathing or napping.
Urvi Kumbhat is a writer from Calcutta. She is currently a PhD student in English at Princeton University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Sewanee Review, Georgia Review, AGNI, and elsewhere.
Siwar Masannat is a Jordanian writer and the author of cue (Georgia Review Books, 2024) and 50 Water Dreams (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2015). Masannat is the managing editor of the African Poetry Book Fund and Prairie Schooner.
Bea Chang was born in Taiwan, raised in California and New Jersey, and has traveled to 80 countries. Her essays have appeared in the The Offing, Redivider, Bodega, among others. She has won the Beacon Street Nonfiction Contest, been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and named a Notable Mention in the Best American Essays.
Sandra Jackson-Opoku’s novels are The River Where Blood is Born and Hot Johnny and the Women Who Loved Him. Her fiction, nonfiction, and dramatic work is widely published and produced. Awards include a Pushcart Prize nomination, the NEA Fellowship, an American Library Association Black Caucus Award, and a Chicago Esteemed Artist Award.
Hannah D. Markley is a freelance writer, educator, and editor. She currently resides in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and contributes as an assistant editor to Terrain.org. Her work has been supported by The Kentucky Foundation for Women, and her writing appears in Fourth Genre and Bitter Southerner.
Alana Perez is an emerging writer born and raised in Providence, RI. Her work speaks from Caribbean roots, chronicling the makings of one’s heritage and faith through inner and outer landscapes. Lana’s work can be found in Meridians and Black Warrior Review as she completes her debut collection of poems.
Rena Priest is a member of the Lhaq’temish (Lummi) Nation. She served as Washington State’s 6th Poet Laureate, has authored three books, and edited two anthologies. Her work has received fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, Indigenous Nations Poets, and University of Washington Libraries. Learn more at renapriest.com.
Holly Zora Zadra’s Croatian ancestors fled the Austro-Hungarian empire and landed in the mines, smelters, and refineries of the Anaconda Copper Company in Montana. Holly tells their story through two works — one fiction, one nonfiction — situated at the crossroads of colonization, industrial labor, environmental contamination, and intergenerational healing.
Marleah Makpiaq LaBelle is of Sugpiaq/Iñupiaq/Filipina descent and is a Tribal member of the Native Village of Port Graham. Marleah is a playwright, poet, and writer. Some of her previous involvement includes the Alaska Native Playwright Project, Dark Winter Productions, and the One Minute Play Festival.
Grace MacNair – A 2023 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Poetry, Grace has received fellowships and support from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, Storyknife, Marble House Project, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Monson Arts, the Carolyn Moore Writers House, Bread Loaf Writers’ and Translators’ Conference. Grace was selected by Yona Harvey as the winner of Radar Poetry’s 2021 Coniston Prize and by Safia Elhillo as the winner of Palette Poetry’s 2022 Emerging Poet Prize. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Threepenny Review, Poetry Northwest, The Missouri Review, Frontier Poetry, Best New Poets 2022, and elsewhere. Grace’s micro-chapbook, Even As They Curse Us, is available from Bull City Press.
Emi Macuaga Originally from Tokyo, M.E. Macuaga is a Japanese-Bolivian storyteller whose diverse work has been published by entities ranging from Marvel Comics to literary magazines. She loves writing both fiction and creative nonfiction, and is honored to be supported by organizations such as International Thriller Writers, Jentel Arts, Hedgebrook, and Storyknife. Emi is Storyknife’s 2024 Mary Ellen State fellowship recipient.
Lisa Page is co-editor of We Wear The Mask: 15 True Stories of Passing in America, (Beacon Press). Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, LitHub Weekly, The Crisis, Virginia Quarterly Review, American Short Fiction, and the Washington Post Book World. She is an assistant professor of English at the George Washington University.
Dawn Tasaka Steffler is a fiction writer from Hawaii who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. She was a 2023 Smokelong Quarterly Emerging Writer Fellow and her stories were selected by Bath Flash Fiction Award and Welkin Mini Prize. Her work appears in Flash Frog, Pithead Chapel, Ghost Parachute & more. She is an associate fiction editor at Pithead Chapel. Find her online at dawntasakasteffler.com and on social media @dawnsteffler
All winter long, I’ve been visiting the cabins at Storyknife, checking everything out, and they’ve been very dark, sleepy almost. But now, the rugs have been shaken out, fresh linens put on the beds, every part scrubbed and shined. The crew is back at Storyknife, preparing for the new season of writers that will begin April 1st.
In conjunction with this fresh start, we’ll have a second go at the Founder’s Fellowship Challenge. Just as she did last year, Dana Stabenow is issuing a challenge to match the fellowship and travel scholarship funds that she donates each year. Storyknife fellowships are $5500 to underwrite one writer while in residency. Dana also offers a $1000 scholarship to support the travel of one resident. We have several exciting new fellowships this year, as well as the Rona Jaffe Foundation fellow that will be awarded for a 2025 writer. If you’d like to read more about the other fellowships currently being offered you can check them out here.
Founder Dana Stabenow with September writers Su Hwang, Christina Berke, Joy Huntington, and Farnaz Fatemi.
If you’d like to sponsor a fellowship, please let me know at ehollowell@storyknife.org. Sponsors of a fellowship are encouraged to specify what kind of writer they’d like to support, name the fellowship, and when possible meet with their fellows. It’s a wonderful way to know that you’re making a difference in a woman writer’s life.
Starting today and through April, Dana is challenging us to raise $6,500 to match her annual donation. A donation in April not only honors Storyknife’s Founder and her continued support but ALSO will support a woman writer putting her heart on the page.
If you’d like to dedicate your donation to Dana, or to anyone else who has positively impacted your life, please let us know on the donation form.
We’re very excited to kick off the year, planting the seeds of good writing that will undoubtedly blossom into good reading for all of us and a more joyful and hopeful world.
Storyknife Writers Retreat, a nonprofit founded in 2016 and located in Homer, Alaska, hosts residencies for women writers from Alaska, across the United States, and internationally. Storyknife’s mission is to give women writers the time and space to explore their craft without distraction, seeking especially to elevate the work of women from historically excluded communities. Storyknife hosts over 50 women each year in their beautiful facility overlooking the Aleutian Mountain Range and Cook Inlet. Women writers have two or four weeks to live and work in their own cabin and are provided with gorgeous meals eaten together in the main house.
The Rona Jaffe Foundation (www.ronajaffefoundation.org) will be sponsoring a fellowship each year to be awarded to a promising emerging woman writer exhibiting the highest quality work and the need for a residency opportunity at this particular moment in her literary career. Rona Jaffe Foundation Fellows may apply in any genre. For the purpose of this fellowship, “emerging writers” are defined as those who are as yet unpublished or who are just completing their first book. Writers may be considered if they have a book under contract or have published chapbooks.
The fellowship will underwrite expenses for a four-week residency and provide the fellow with a $1,500 stipend which may be used to cover travel expenses, lost income, child care, or other necessities.
The Rona Jaffe Foundation’s legacy of supporting emerging women writers began in 1995. Their work acknowledges the difficulties some of the most talented women have in overcoming obstacles in finding time to write and gaining attention. For over 27 years, the Rona Jaffe Foundation has supported women writers through their Writers’ Awards program (1995-2020), by sponsoring fellowships held at distinguished cultural and educational nonprofit institutions throughout the country, and supporting vital literary nonprofits. Storyknife Writers Retreat is honored to partner with an organization that has helped so many women build successful writing lives by offering opportunities, encouragement, and financial support.
The Rona Jaffe Foundation Fellow will be awarded starting for the Storyknife Writers Retreat 2025 residency cohort. Applications for residency will open on July 1, 2024. For more information and to apply, see the Storyknife Writers Retreat website.
Welcome to the end of February…. Good thing it’s a leap year, because we’re gonna need that extra day to get ready for all of the goodness that’s set to arise from Storyknife this year.
I just got back from four days at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference that was held in Kansas City this year. I try to attend each year to stay up to date with other writing residency directors as well as touch base to support Storyknife alums who are presenting or releasing new books. Honestly, it is so heartening to see members of Storyknife cohorts walking around with each other, offering bookmarks for their new books, meeting each other at signing tables, and just generally be part of the larger Storyknife community (especially when I set the get-together early in the morning for breakfast).
Storyknife is doing exactly what Dana imagined it might: providing time and space for writers to devote to their craft AND creating a community of writers that support each other long after their residency is over.
Now comes to the more disappointing news. I spent time talking with several women-led presses and women-led writing organization, and I learned that giving to nonprofit organizations that serve women is very low. According to the Women & Girls Index report, only 1.81% of philanthropic giving in 2020 went to women’s and girls’ organizations, and of that 1.81%, the lowest amount went to arts and culture organizations that serve women.
Oof. Those figures hurt. Now, more than ever, the voices of women need to be supported. Women’s stories, poems, essays, memoirs, plays, and films can help our culture move forward with greater dignity for all.
Please look forward to hearing about the amazing writers who will be at Storyknife in 2024. And if you have a bit to help push that 1.81% up, you can donate in small monthly increments and it makes a huge different to the women writers you support.
Meanwhile, we’ll be getting ready to welcome the first cohort on April 1st to the magic that is the Storyknife community.
Storyknife Writers Retreat 