Winner Announced for the 2009 Rona Jaffe Foundation/Vermont Studio Center Fellowship
The Vermont Studio Center is pleased to announce the winner of the 2009 Rona Jaffe Foundation/Vermont Studio Center Fellowship. Now in its second year, this fellowship is intended to support the month-long residency of an emergent woman writer who will be a first-time resident at VSC. The fellowship covers full VSC residency fee and offers an additional stipend of $1,250 to help cover expenses associated with taking the residency, including but not limited to replacement of lost income, rent, childcare or travel. 
The winner of the second Rona Jaffe Foundation/Vermont Studio Center Fellowship is writer Kim Coleman Foote, of New York City, who has scheduled her residency in July, 2010. Poet and writer Marge Piercy served as Chair of the selection committee. Kim has an MFA from Chicago State University and did her undergraduate work at Swarthmore. She received a Fulbright Fellowship to Ghana in '02-03 and is currently working on a novel that weaves several women's stories around the trans-Atlantic slave trade in 18th-century and present-day Ghana, as well as a memoir about her experiences living in Ghana.
For the purposes of this Fellowship, emergent writers are defined as those who are as yet unpublished, or have begun publishing in literary journals, or who are just completing their first book. (Women writers who have published a standard trade edition of their work do not qualify for this fellowship.) All eligible writers of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction who are citizens or permanent residents of the U.S. will be considered for this Fellowship, which pays tribute to the memory of celebrated author Rona Jaffe, www.ronajaffefoundation.org.
In addition to its annual Fellowship, The Rona Jaffe Foundation
also provides support to the VSC Fellowship Fund for writers and the VSC Visiting Writers Program, www.vermontstudiocenter.org/201/.
The next application deadline for The Rona Jaffe Foundation/Vermont Studio Center Fellowship is 10/1/10. Information on how to apply will be available on the VSC website in August, 2010.
