OUR 2007 WRITERS

The Montana Artists Refuge in Basin announces the recipients of our second Writers Residency Scholarships: Vicki Lindner, Casper, WY; Katherine Kahn, Chesterfield, MA; Katherine Crawford, Brevard, NC; and Kevin Vaughn, currently residing in Krakow, Poland.

These talented writers will spend the month of October at the Refuge, and will be signing books during the Helena Festival of the Book on October 12th at the Holter Museum. They will be doing a reading on October 13th 2:30-4:00 also at the Holter, with a reception to follow.

The event is free and open to the public. For Helena Book Festival schedules and more information visit the website www.helenabookfest.com.

Katherine S. Crawford received her BA from Clemson University in both English and Speech & Communications Studies, and her MA in English from the University of Charleston. She lives in the mountains of Western North Carolina, where she teaches literature and composition and also serves as an academic counselor at Brevard College.

A former newspaper reporter, camp counselor, and swimming instructor, Katherine is also an unapologetic travel addict and freelance writer who has recently completed her first novel.The novel, entitled Unto the Hills, was awarded First Place in the historical fiction category of the 2007 Paul Gillette Novel Contest, given by the Pikes Peak Writers’ Conference. Her literary agent is currently pitching the work to publishers.

Katherine’s writing is often set in the American South of the past and present. Her essays, poems, and stories are rooted in humankind’s complicated relationship with the wild, the often mercurial ties of friendship and family, the recreating power of history, and the underlying sense of the sacred in all of it.

Kate Kahn grew up on a working farm in rural Pennsylvania in an area populated with cows, Mennonites, and double-wides. College brought her to Massachusetts where she attended Simon’s Rock of Bard College, Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine, and the New England School of Acupuncture. After a decade of working in private practice as a veterinarian and an acupuncturist, Kate changed careers in 2002 and now makes her living as a medical writer and journalist.

Much of her fiction focuses on rural working-class poverty and desperation, and the plight of women in these circumstances. As an adoptee, Kate is also working on autobiographical stories related to uncovering the identity of her birth family, and the afflictions of mental illness and violence that have affected her adoptive family. She has been awarded writer’s residencies at Hedgebrook, Ragdale, and most recently, the Montana Artists Refuge. In addition she was the recipient of an artist’s development grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and a Carlisle Family Scholarship from Squaw Valley Community of Writers.

Vicki Lindner is a fiction writer, essayist, and journalist who lives in the Shoshone National Forest near Dubois, Wyoming.  Before moving west to join the University of Wyoming’s English Department, where she taught creative writing from 1988 to 2007, she wrote for commercial magazines and publishing companies in New York City for 22 years.

Her short fiction has appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including The Paris Review, New York Woman, Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review, Fiction, Chick-Lit: Post Feminist Fiction, Fiction, Witness, The Best of Terrain, and Del Sol. Recent essays and travel pieces have been published in The Seneca Review, High Country News, New Writing: An International Journal of the Theory and Practice of Creative Writing, New York Stories, In Short: An Anthology of Short Creative Non-Fiction, Bearing Life: Women’s Writings about Childlessness, and Gastronomica.  Lindner’s essays about moving West appeared in the well-known Missoula journal, Northern Lights. Vicki has received a PEN/NEA award for fiction, a fiction fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, two from the New York State Foundation for the Arts, and two for creative nonfiction from the Wyoming Arts Council.

Kevin Vaughn is a 27 year-old poet and editor who lives in New York, but at heart, will always be a Jersey boy. He has been educated at some of the most esteemed institutions of higher education in the world, such as Vermont College, Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic and Columbia University in the City of New York, where he is expecting to receive his MFA for poetry. Kevin's poems have recently appeared in Mississippi Review and WheelHouse Magazine.

During the 2006-2007 academic year, Kevin served as a United States Department of State J. William Fulbright Fellow at the ancient and renowned Jagiellonian University in Cracow, Poland where he worked to raise awareness of black American literature. Kevin is also a Fellow of the Cave Canem Foundation, founded by American poets Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady, whose goal is to support emerging black poets from throughout the diaspora. Notable among CC's alumnus are: Tyehimba Jess, Tracy K. Smith, Kevin Young and the winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, Natasha Trethewey.

Vaughn has worked as an editor at the pillar of American poetry periodicals: PARNASSUS: Poetry in Review, under the tutelage of the legendary editor and academic Herbert Leibowitz.

Kevin has written in America, France, Poland, Hungary and Czech Republic.

ABOUT THE WRITERS' RESIDENCY

The application process for 2007 is now closed. Stay tuned for revised applications for our 2008 program.

The Montana Artists Refuge offers a Writers Residency during the month of October.  All four residency spaces will be occupied by writers of any genre – prose, poetry, illustrated books, screen and play writing – with a studio space available for collaborations and impromptu performances or readings. 

The Refuge will provide comfortable living accommodations, including utilities up to $250 per month, a quiet rural atmosphere in which to create, the inspiration of a Rocky Mountain environment, and a supportive artistic community with which to interact if one chooses!

APPLY HERE
Want to apply for a residency?
Download an Application Packet (Word doc)
Download an Applicant Packet (Adobe pdf)

The Montana Festival of the Book is held in September in Missoula, and the Helena Festival of the Book takes place in October.  The Refuge staff collaborates with the festival to create opportunities for Refuge residents to attend and participate according to their interest in panels, readings, or workshops.