This year’s award process involved multiple rounds of jurying and the review of 68 submissions from throughout Washington State.
Our jury was comprised of poetry professionals located in Seattle, Spokane, Walla Walla, and the Olympic Peninsula.
Allied Arts Foundation was impressed by the variety of applications, the high quality presented, and the level of dedication to the art of poetry that was evident.
Special thanks goes to Nancy Mee & Dennis Evans for funding our top grant award, and to our last-minute donors who funded our three Honorable Mention awards.
The 2020 Artist Grant Awards in Poetry are funded, in part, by:
A longtime resident of Seattle, Kary Wayson works as a poetry teacher and freelance editor, as well as an associate editor for Poetry Northwest.
Kary has won many awards for her work, including the “Discovery”/The Nation Prize, the Crazyhorse/Linda Hull Memorial Prize, The Charles B. Wheeler Prize for her first book, American Husband, and The Burnside Review Prize for her second, The Slip.
Laura McKee
Seattle poet Laura McKee received a BA from the University of Utah and an MFA from the University of Washington. Her first collection, Uttermost Paradise Place, published by Copper Canyon Press, was selected by Claudia Keelan for the 2009 APR/Honickman First Book Prize. See You Soon was published through the University of Arkansas Press as a finalist for the Miller Williams Prize.
Rena Priest
A poet and a member of the Lhaq’temish (Lummi) Nation, Rena’s literary debut, Patriarchy Blues, was honored with a 2018 American Book Award. Her most recent collection, Sublime Subliminal, was selected as the finalist for the Floating Bridge Press Chapbook Award. She is a National Geographic Explorer and a Jack Straw Writer (2019). She holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and lives in Bellingham.
Jeannine Hall Gailey
Woodinville poet Jeannine Hall Gailey is the author of Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, Unexplained Fevers, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, and winner of the Moon City Press Book Prize, Field Guide to the End of the World. Her work has been featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily, and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror.
Jenifer Browne Lawrence
Jenifer Browne Lawrence is the author of Grayling (Perugia Press) and One Hundred Steps from Shore (Blue Begonia Press). Her awards include the Perugia Press Prize, the Orlando Poetry Prize, and the James Hearst Poetry Prize. Her work appears in Cincinnati Review, Los Angeles Review, Narrative, North American Review, and elsewhere. Jenifer lives in Poulsbo, WA, and has recently retired from serving as editor-in-chief for Crab Creek Review.
Derek Sheffield
Derek Sheffield’s collection, Not for Luck, won the Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize judged by Mark Doty and is forthcoming from Michigan State University Press in 2021. His other books include Through the Second Skin, finalist for the Washington State Book Award, and Dear America. A professor of English at Wenatchee Valley College and poetry editor of Terrain.org, he lives with his family in Leavenworth.
Judith Camann
A poet, knitter and education specialist living in Seattle, Judith recently earned her MFA in Creative Writing from Ashland University, adding to her advanced degrees in early childhood education, special education and counseling.
Warning: Video contains strong language.
Linda Malnack
Linda lives in Normandy Park. Her poetry chapbook, 21 Boxes, was published by dancing girl press in 2016. She was co-editor for the on-line poetry journal, Switched-on Gutenberg, for 20+ years and currently volunteers as an Assistant Poetry Editor for Crab Creek Review.
Holly Thomas
Holly is a freelance editor, writer, poet, and artist with more than thirty years of wordsmithing experience. A native of upstate New York, she moved to Seattle in the mid-1990s and now lives on Whidbey Island. Her first book, Pluck Another Apple, Eve, And Finish It, was published in 2019.
Joanna Thomas
Both poet and visual artist, Joanna lives in Ellensburg. Her poems have appeared in Found Poetry Review, petrichor, and Picture Sentence; her chapbook blue•bird (bloo-burd) is forthcoming from Milk & Cake Press in 2021. You can find her at https://joannathomas.xyz/ and https://inlandpoetry.com/
Scott Woodham
An Associate English instructor at Big Bend Community College in Moses Lake, Scott was chosen to receive a 2019 Exceptional Faculty Award grant. He is a former Opinion Pages Editor and columnist at Alaska Dispatch News and earned his MFA in Creative Writing from Murray State University in Kentucky.
Allied Arts Foundation awarded eleven grants to poets living in Washington State.
Applicants filled out the application below, including submitting the following:
Entries were judged anonymously.
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This year’s artist awards focused on Poetry, with no restriction on the type of poetry (rhymed, unrhymed, free verse, blank verse, narrative, prose poetry, found poetry, traditional and invented forms, etc., were all accepted).
Submitted work was required to be the original creation of the author.
Unfortunately, we do not have the resources to judge spoken word, audio, video, performance, or mixed-media work, and we were unable accept these. Foreign language, translations, and collaborative works were also ineligible.
Applicants must have met the following requirements:
Awarded grant funds are considered Earned Income by the IRS and must be reported on your taxes. Award winners will be required to submit a signed Form W-9 to Allied Arts Foundation. Forms 1099 reporting the grant award will be sent by Allied Arts Foundation to the IRS with a copy sent to the award winners.
To be considered for a grant you must do the following by 11:30 PM on June 15, 2020:
Late materials cannot be considered.
For questions about your application, email Jeff Rinedahl, Operations Manager: jeff@alliedarts-foundation.org.
Please allow plenty of time to complete the form and to provide the appropriate support documents. Allied Arts Foundation has only one part-time staff person; last-minute requests cannot be accommodated.
Applications submitted without the entry fee being received or postmarked by June 15, 2020 will be ineligible. Entry fees are not refundable for any reason whatsoever.
If you need assistance with paying the entry fee, please contact grants@alliedarts-foundation.org and we’ll be glad to help you.
Fees may be paid one of three ways:
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Allied Arts Foundation
3518 Fremont Ave N #521
Seattle, WA 98103
For questions about your application, email Jeff Rinedahl, jeff@alliedarts-foundation.org.
