New Fellows & Scholars

The Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance is pleased to announce the recipients of several fall fellowships and scholarships. These fellowships and scholarships support writers at different stages of their careers and living in different parts of Maine.

For the third year in a row, MWPA has selected five or more Ashley Bryan Fellows in honor of the life and work of Ashley Bryan (below, top left) and to support emerging writers. Bryan was the author of more than fifty books and recipient of many awards including MWPA’s Distinguished Achievement Award in 2017. Bryan Fellows receive a five-year membership to MWPA with some free workshops each year as well as other forms of support; fellowships are awarded to emerging Maine writers who are Black, people of color, and/or members of one of the Wabanaki Nations or other Native peoples. MWPA’s Samara Cole Doyon lead the selection process with two jurors who are current Bryan Fellows.

The 2023 Bryan Fellows include (below, clockwise from left to right): educator, writer, and performer Linda Ashe-Ford, artist, writer, and community organizer Dania Bowie, writer and graphic designer Kendric Chua, writer, mother, and boat captain Minquansis Sapiel, and poet and community organizer Stacey Tran. A full bio for each Ashley Bryan Fellow appears below.

In September, thanks to an ongoing partnership with the Maine Community Foundation, the MWPA awarded Martin Dibner Memorial Fellowships to Kristin Kearns and t love smith (at right, from left to right) to attend the Harvest Writers Retreat, all expenses paid. Kearns lives in Northport and her fiction has appeared in Fiction, Alaska Quarterly Review, Confrontation, Failbetter, and Calyx. smith is studying English at USM where they are researching transgender ecologies and mystical nature poetics. t is also an editorial board member at the USM Free Press and president of the USM Poet’s Society. 

Thanks to a partnership with Monson Arts, three MWPA jurors recently selected (below, left to right) fiction writer Rylan Hynes, nonfiction writer Sarah Kilch Gaffney, and poet Betsy Sholl to receive residencies at Monson Arts in 2024. A full bio for each writer appears below.

Thanks to the ongoing support of NYT-bestselling writer Christina Baker Kline, MWPA recently selected Erica Cassidy Dubois (above, second from right) as this year’s Christina Baker Kline Scholar. Dubois will receive free workshops at MWPA, as well as a chance to consult with Baker Kline. Her stories have appeared in literary journals in the U.S. and Canada, most recently in the Massachusetts Review. And finally, thanks to a fund set up back in 2016 to honor the untimely passing of Elizabeth Ilgenfritz, a longtime member of the organization, writer Jill McLaughlin (above, at right) received an Ilgrenfritz Scholarship, a $1000 award to carry out self-directed research in the midcoast for an ongoing writing project. McLaughlin was a Dibner Fellow in 2019, and her work has been published or is forthcoming in Stonecoast Review, Pangyrus, Channel, Ireland's Environmental Literary Magazine, and The First Line Journal.

The MWPA congratulates all of these writers on their fellowships and scholarships, as well as all of those who applied this year. Each of these opportunities will open again for submissions in the early fall of 2024. For more information on any of these opportunities, visit mainewriters.org.

2023 Ashley Bryan Fellows

Linda Ashe-Ford is a veteran in the early education field and was a classroom teacher for over 45 years. She is a past president of the Maine Association for the Education of Young Children as well as a past treasurer of the New England Association for the Education Of Young Children. Linda holds a Master in Education from Antioch New England Graduate School and a BA in Theater and Communications from the University of Hartford. Using her background in theater, she has written, produced and performed both original and scripted materials on various topics. Linda is a storyteller who brings the history and folktales of people of color to life. She believes that through story we can begin to deepen our understanding of each other.

Dania Bowie (she/they) is an artist, as well as a resource and community organizer who works to move resources and people power to address systems-level change through civic and political education in Maine. They are first-generation Filipinx American, queer, and a learning abolitionist. Their art—from fiction writing to painting—seeks to connect people, but also complicate the narrative of resilience in immigrant families. Their focus is on the Filipinx diaspora and the consequences of living global lives as previously colonized people.

Growing up gay in a community with strong Catholic roots on the northernmost island of the Philippines, Kendric Chua spent most of his childhood in his imagination and within the fictional worlds of others, like Stephen King, to inoculate himself from an abusive household. Kendric emigrated to the United States when he was fifteen and earned his BFA in Visual Effects from the Savannah College of Art and Design. He now proudly calls Maine home and volunteers his design skills to benefit non-profit organizations. He has finished the first draft of his first novel and written several short stories, most of which are set in Maine. Kendric is currently being coached by Maine novelist and transgender activist, Alex Myers.

Minquansis Sapiel is a Passamaquoddy TribaI member, mother of three daughters and has a Masters in Social Work. Her daughter also illustrated the children’s book she wrote Little People of the Dawn. She grew up on the Sipayik Reservation and moved off to go to college at the University of Maine. She also has her Captain’s license and offers whale watching tours.

Stacey Tran (she/they) is a community organizer, author of Soap for the Dogs (Gramma, 2018), and creator of Tender Table, a project celebrating Black and Brown community by connecting and honoring our identities, traditions, joy, resilience, and fight for collective liberation through storytelling and food.

MWPA's 2024 Monson Residents

Rylan Hynes is the Communications & Editorial Director at The Telling Room, a nationally recognized youth literary arts nonprofit, in Portland. Hynes studied at College of the Atlantic and has worked with independent bookstores across the country, including Chicago’s Women & Children First, and publishing house Alice James Books. In 2020, Hynes was awarded a Martin Dibner Fellowship by the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance (MWPA), and in 2022, Hynes received a Lit Fest Fellowship from MWPA and helped facilitate the inaugural Maine Lit Fest. Currently Hynes serves on the Community Advisory Board for MWPA.

Sarah Kilch Gaffney has worked as a brain injury advocate and educator for the last eight years, and she teaches community writing workshops for caregivers and grieving individuals. Her writing has been published widely, and she is at work on a memoir about life with her first husband, who was diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor at age 27. In 2023, she was selected as an MWPA Dibner Fellow and as a finalist for the Sustainable Arts Foundation Awards. She is a past MWPA Literary Awards finalist and a previous recipient of a Maine Arts Commission grant. You can find her work at www.sarahkilchgafffney.com.

Betsy Sholl’s tenth collection of poetry is As If a Song Could Save You (University of Wisconsin Press, 2022). Her ninth collection of poetry is House of Sparrows: New and Selected Poems (University of Wisconsin, 2019), winner of the Four Lakes Prize. Other awards include a Maine Book Award for Poetry, The Felix Pollak Prize, the AWP Prize for Poetry, an NEA Fellowship. She teaches in the MFA in Writing Program of Vermont College of Fine Arts and served as Poet Laureate of Maine from 2006 to 2011. She was awarded the 2020 Distinguished Achievement Award from MWPA, and received an honorary doctorate from USM in 2022.