Three Wyoming writers have been honored with the Creative Writing Fellowship awards of 2018 from the Wyoming Arts Council.
Each year, the Arts Council seeks outstanding writers of Wyoming to shine a spotlight on. This year’s recipients will each receive a monetary award of $3,000 and will have further opportunities for their work to be featured across the state.
“Fellowships are a way of recognizing the writers in this state who do great work and are excelling in their work,” said Assistant Director Rachel Clifton.
The awards have been issued since the ‘80s to noteworthy writers and are funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Wyoming state legislature and by private donors interested in enriching artistic culture. Along with the monetary award and the Arts Council’s official recognition, recipients continue to share their work with the public through events such as literary conferences and writing workshops.
This year, Fellowships were awarded in the categories of Poetry, Fiction and Creative Nonfiction.
The winner of the fellowship in Poetry is Cara Rodriguez, who teaches English at Casper College and holds a master’s degree in poetry from the University of Wyoming. Her poetry is inspired by day-to-day life and relationships; delving into themes of forgiveness, shame and identity. Her work has been featured in publications such as Zetetic, Clerestory and The Found Poetry Review.
For Fiction, the award winner is Ben Werner, another UW alumnus. Werner holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in English and now resides in Cody working as an arborist—one who studies, cultivates and manages individual trees and other plant life. His writing is focused on the twists and turns of memory and one’s self image.
The Creative Nonfiction award has gone to Carly Fraysier, who holds a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from UW accompanied by a Bachelor of Applied Science in English and environmental studies from St. Lawrence University. Fraysier spent much of her life residing in Vermont but is now one of the 25 residents of Ucross, Wyoming, an unincorporated community of artists near Sheridan, where she works for the Ucross Foundation. The foundation provides time and space for committed artists to work, uninterrupted, on a 20,000-acre ranch surrounded by mountain scenery. Fraysier’s writing has been featured in Western Confluence Magazine and made her a finalist for Missouri Review’s 2016 Jeffery E. Smith Editor’s Prize.
Those interested in following the future work and public appearances of these writers can find more details from the Wyoming Arts Council.
