BLUFF, UT–The Ellen Meloy Fund for Desert Writers announces that Joe Wilkins, currently of Forest City, Iowa, will receive the third annual Desert Writers Award. Mr. Wilkins will receive a grant of $2,000 for field work on the eastern front of the Rocky Mountains, “that swath of wide open that runs north and south across America, where the short grass prairies and plains meet the high desert—and then they all rise up to meet the mountains.”

The Ellen Meloy Fund for Desert Writers supports writers whose work reflects the spirit and passions for the desert embodied in Meloy’s writing and her commitment to a “deep map of place.”Before her untimely death in 2004, Ellen published four books, numerous articles and radio commentaries, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and recipient of the John Burrows Association Medal for 2007.

Wilkins was chosen from a strong field of applicants. The selection committee congratulates the other finalists, Aaron Gilbreath, Reesa Grushka, Amy Irvine, and Mary Sojourner for their excellent submissions.

“Wilkins writes of eastern Montana’s ‘Big Dry’ in the precise, crisp and engaging language of a native son raised under the tutelage of a life-long storyteller,’ says committee member Ann Weiler Walka. “An eye for detail and an ear for local rhythms reveal a bone deep intimacy with the people and landscapes of his high desert birthplace.”

In his proposed project, Wilkins anticipates exploring the eastern front from Montana to Texas. “Not as striking and strange as the high country and deserts of Arizona and Utah; sparsely settled and isolated from the influence of most major cities; home to a people mostly poor and still clinging to an outdated agriculture—the eastern front is a forgotten region of the American West. Similarly, the contemporary literature of the Great American Desert is as sparse as the good rivers that cut that dry country.”

Wilkins has published in the Georgia Review, the Missouri Review, Northwest Review, Tar River Poetry, Pleiades, Orion, and elsewhere. His essay “A Story and a Prayer” won The Obsidian Prize in Nonfiction for writing about the American West from High Desert Journal, and his first chapbook of poems, Ragged Point Road, was published last winter by Main Street Rag Press.

Joe Wilkins, MFA directs the Creative Writing Program at Waldorf College and teaches writing courses in all the genres, as well as courses in modern and contemporary literature. He earned his BS in computer engineering from Gonzaga University in 2002 and his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Idaho in 2007. His poems, essays, and stories have appeared in The Georgia Review, The Missouri Review, Northwest Review, and Best New Poets 2006, among other literary magazines.

Read announcement on Waldorf College website.

…in the desert there is everything and there is nothing. Stay curious. Know where you are—your biological address. Get to know your neighbors—plants, creatures, who lives there, who died there, who is blessed, cursed, what is absent or in danger or in need of your help. Pay attention to the weather, to what breaks your heart, to what lifts your heart. Write it down.                    

~E.M.  November 2004

Ellen Meloy's sudden death on November 4, 2004, sent waves of shock and sorrow from her red rock home in Bluff, Utah. She contributed a sensual lodestone, a shining river cobble to the literature of natural history, science and the southwest. A world of readers, friends and family seek to illuminate and honor her legacy of words through a memorial fund, established to empower other writers with a place in the desert.

All good writing finds voice in place and experience; really good nature writing lives in the field. Ellen Meloy breathed the desert air and wrote. Her voice was strong and sure because her inspiration was direct. Ellen was widely recognized for her excellence, which gave birth to four books, all collections of essays, largely about human connections to wilderness, deserts and rivers. No river trip, hike or car camp was complete without her journal.

Ellen had a successful writing career in the desert through her perseverance as a lone eagle free-lance writer. She was fortunate to achieve recognition and support herself, her passion and her lifelong love affair with the Colorado Plateau.

Giving to the Fund

The Ellen Meloy Fund offers a yearly award of $2,000 to an individual of similar passion and desire to write about the desert from the desert. The level of support and number of awards will increase as the principal of the fund develops through effective fundraising and investment.

Most of the funds will be raised from individuals; all donations are tax deductible. Arrangements can be made to accommodate personal financial situations, including gifts over time. Contributions of $100 or more will receive either a hardbound first edition of Ellen's Pulitzer Prize finalist, The Anthropology of Turquoise OR a copy of Ellen's last book, Eating Stone , inscribed by Mark Meloy, her husband, OR a CD with 22 of Ellen's Utah Public Radio commentaries. Please specify which item you would prefer (which book or the CD).

To make a contribution to this fund, please send a check in any amount payable to "Ellen Meloy Fund" and mail to:

Ellen Meloy Fund
D.A. Davidson and Co.
P.O. Box 1677
Helena, MT 59624

We accept credit card donations through PayPal. Click on the PayPal button to make a secure credit card transaction.

We welcome your involvement in this critical addition to the field of nature writing and in sustaining the legacy of Ellen Meloy.

Applying for a Grant

The Fund seeks to support writing that combines an engaging individual voice, literary sensibility, imagination and intellectual rigor with desert literacy to add new perspectives and deeper meaning to the body of desert literature. We seek writing that uses rich language to transform raw experience into art.

The Ellen Meloy Fund for Desert Writers endeavors to send willing and talented people out to the desert to write. This annual grant assists writers of literary nonfiction with expenses related to spending creative time in a desert environment.

The anticipated benefits are huge: enriching writers with the enduring powers of the desert and providing readers with knowledge of and a passion for desert places. That education is the meat of protection. No law, regulation, claim or movement proceeds without the stories that promote and inspire.

Quick facts about the Ellen Meloy Writers Award:

• One annual award of $2,000 is given for literary or creative nonfiction proposals only. No fiction or poetry proposals will be considered.
• Proposals in Adobe Acrobat format (pdf) must be submitted via e-mail no later than December 31, 2008.
• The 2009 award will be announced in April 2009.

Go here for detailed application guidelines.

The Ellen Meloy Fund for Desert Writers is a nonprofit organization with tax-exempt status under section 501(c)(3).