Pictured from left to right at the 2009 board meeting in Zion National Park are Don Snow, Sandy Shuptrine, Grant Ditzler, Patti Borneman, Kim Konikow, Joan Miles, Mark Meloy, Ann Walka, and Tony Jewett (missing but in attendance was Greer Chesher).

Tony Jewett (co-chair) drifted to Helena penniless, homeless and happy in 1980. Armed with a crate of Campbell’s soups and a heating coil, he took up temporary professional refuge at the Montana Environmental Information Center, where he met both his wife, Joan Miles, and his lifelong friend Ellen. Ellen became the center of a circle of friends devoted to all-day fun and laughs, any-excuse excursions into the ‘great out-a-doors’, and making the world a better place through environmental advocacy. Ellen once rescued Tony from the arresting clutches of a rural Montana sheriff whom Tony had (for some reason) mistaken for the friendly Easter bunny. They remained entwined by a shared passion for the red rocks to the south and the search for the next chapter ahead.

Joan Miles (co-chair) lives and plays in Montana where she also works for a private health care organization and is involved in statewide health policy issues. She met Ellen in the Environmental Studies graduate program in Missoula, and Joan and Ellen later joined Don Snow in working for an environmental advocacy group in Helena. The three were known to do things like pack a picnic dinner, drinks and fancy hats, and turn a field trip to the toxic waste pit in Butte into a “pitnic.” Ellen abandoned the job and the house she shared with Joan when she met Mark Meloy and drifted south to the Utah desert.

Patti Borneman met Ellen in the 1980s when her husband Bill began working with Ellen’s soon-to-be husband, Mark. A lasting friendship ensued, built on a mutual love of good food, good wine, good books, and Ellen’s good dog, Coeur d’Alene. After Ellen moved to Utah, Patti followed Ellen’s remarkable literary accomplishments. Later, Patti designed and launched the EllenMeloy.com website. Now, as a board member, she manages the online grant application process, keeps the website up to date, and contributes in innumerable ways to keep the EMF on track and moving forward.

Greer Chesher is a writer living in Rockville, UT, with the Adventure Dog Bo, the Jack Russell Terror Minnie, Marion Blackberry the cat, and horses Valiant and Rowdy. She met Ellen through the exchange of funny postcards, and wishes she still received them.

Grant Ditzler is Ellen’s brother and bonvivant elementary school art teacher in San Francisco. Over the years Grant and his wife Frances were frequent seasonal visitors to the Meloy-Ditzler residence in Bluff, UT, where they offered Ellen wise tidbits of advice and moral support in how to handle Mark and served as arbiters of the unanswerable on long summer evenings spent on Ellen’s front porch gazing down at the bluffs over the San Juan.

Lenora Ditzler is Ellen’s niece and daughter of Grant, which probably explains a lot… As a teen, Lenora loyally followed Ellen around the desert. As an adult, she follows Ellen’s example of how to live a meaningful life: by folding art and science together into a daily practice, indulging a healthy dose of wanderlust, and giving in to a deeply-felt pull towards wild and open spaces. Lenora’s pursuits have led her on wacky travel adventures, onto the decks of many commercial fishing boats from Maine to Alaska, into the vegetable garden, and finally into the classroom. She now teaches Environmental Science to art students in Napa, CA; there you’ll find her in the garden, plotting revenge on the cabbage moth, recounting tales of the high seas, and sketching designs for her new chicken coop. 

Amy Irvine McHarg is a sixth-generation Utahan and longtime wilderness advocate with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. Amy lives with her family in southwest Colorado, where she writes and keeps goats. Her second book, Trespass: Living at the Edge of the Promised Land, won the 2008 Orion Book Award and the 2008 Colorado Book Award..

Maile Meloy is a novelist and short-story writer and Ellen’s niece. She grew up in Montana, where Ellen was an inspiring and entertaining presence. The summer Ellen’s first book, Raven’s Exile, was published, Maile was living with Mark and Ellen in Utah, and working on the Green River. She credits Ellen with making it seem possible to make a life and a living as a writer.

Rena Satre Meloy wishes she had Ellen's voice--both how she remembers it sounding in real life, like rich amber, as well as how she captured it in words on a page. Rena also wishes she had Ellen's height. Although she can only covet these, one thing she and Ellen share whole-heartedly is a reverent love for sunshine. Rena, Ellen's niece, grew up in Helena, Montana and currently works as a graphic designer and artist in Portland, Oregon. And yes, she still worships the sun every chance she gets.

Crystine Miller first encountered Ellen’s work through Ellen's sister-in-law, Kay Satre (a professor of English), while attending Carroll College. She instantly fell in love with Ellen’s connection to the land, her humor, and ability to find and tell the story of the desert. Crystine's interest in Ellen's work has guided her in many academic pursuits including writing her undergraduate thesis on The Anthropology of Turquoise. She had the opportunity to share Ellen's work with a wider audience when she presented this paper at the Southwest and Texas Conference on Culture. Currently, Crystine lives in Eugene, OR where she is completing her MA in English at the University of Oregon. She grew up in central Montana, and, when Oregon's mild climate isn't distracting her, the Montana mountains and plains are always on her mind. 

When Beth Satre was in junior high, her sister Kay moved in with Mark’s brother Tim and her family was welcomed into the extended Meloy clan. As a result, she got to know Ellen as a family member which led to many shared dinners, celebrations, and laughter in Helena along with hikes, hijinks, and sing-a-longs out at the family campsite on Crow Creek. Still living in Montana, Beth is graphic designer who dabbles in photography and loves the wilderness, learning new things, and reading.

Sandy Shuptrine has been spending 'mud season' in Jackson Hole since 2003 where she resides with her family, on the banks of the San Juan River near Bluff, volunteering for the BLM. There she met Mark and Ellen.  Ellen's prose continues to pull her onto the slickrock of Comb Ridge searching for early spring wildflowers and soaking up the dramatic 360 degree vistas into four states.  Sandy's dreams of actually finding time to write seem easily diverted by the daily routines of a volunteer river ranger.  Ellen's books have provided a readily accessible venue for enjoying the familiar desert landscape at any time. She would have dearly loved getting to know Ellen better and perhaps having her as a companion hiker or river runner on occasion.

Don Snow met Ellen Meloy in 1978 when the two of them were stripling grad students at the University of Montana. Ellen’s boyfriend married Don’s girlfriend, leaving Ellen and Don with nothing but their writing and the occasional bottle of tequila. They remained friends. Don created Northern Lights Magazine where some of Ellen’s first essays appeared, along with her artworks and cartoons. Don now teaches at Whitman College in Walla Walla, WA, and regularly introduces students to the works of Ellen
Meloy in his environmental literature course.

A poet and naturalist, Ann Weiler Walka writes, teaches and occasionally leads museum expeditions into the Colorado Plateau backcountry. Her family moved to Bluff at the same time as Mark and Ellen, and for nearly 10 years Ann hiked and floated, gossiped and philosophized, talked writing, and taught writing with Ellen. Ellen is still a frequent companion on Ann’s explorations of the landscape of the imagination.

Chip Ward: After four transformative years at the Sleeping Rainbow Ranch in Capitol Reef, Chip and Linda Ward moved north to the rim of the Great Basin Desert to pursue their modest careers and raise three kids. He has described the rural community where they lived the next 28 years as “Norman Rockwell meets the Dukes of Hazard.”  He was a librarian when his alarm about illnesses among neighborhood children and the abuse of desert lands motivated him to start organizing.  Several successful campaigns to make polluters accountable followed.  He wrote about his political adventures in Canaries on the Rim and Hope’s Horizon.  Until 2007, Chip was also the assistant director of the Salt Lake City Library. He met Ellen when he was a new writer and says she was a wonderful and generous mentor.

John Wilson, also a Montana grad-school friend, introduced Ellen to the river world of trout, flies, boats, and playing hooky. Ellen’s talents overshadowed everyone, but the only thing her fishing friends really wanted to know was, “Can she row?” Happily still in Montana, John just finished a 30-some year career of environmental activism. He and his air guitar are now on the “pro-fun” circuit, haunting Montana rivers as well as bonefish flats in warmer climes. He and his wife Jan continue to support writers (namely Don Snow) by paying tuition for two sons at Whitman College.

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Mark Meloy

Communications
Patti Borneman

Publications
Beth Satre

CONTACT US AT THE FUND FOR DESERT WRITERS.

GRANT APPLICATIONS SHOULD BE MAILED TO:

Ellen Meloy Fund
P.O. Box 484
Bluff, UT 84512

DONATIONS CAN BE MAILED TO:

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