Call for Native Writing: Prize Winners

The Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance is excited to announce this year’s Call for Native Writing Prize Winners.

Winning writers will receive a 1-night stay in Portland, a stipend of $150 (which can be used towards travel and gas), and an opportunity to meet Native writers Morgan Talty, Terese Marie Mailhot, and Joan Naviyuk Kane when they are in conversation at the Maine Lit Fest on Tuesday, October 4th, 2022.

Winning writers include (from left to right) Nolan Altvater, Wendy Newell Dyer, and Morgan Mitchell, as well as Sage Neptune who is not pictured. A full bio for each writer appears below.

Thank you to the Horizon Foundation for making this program possible.

2022 Call for Native Writing Prize Winners

Nolan Altvater is a Passamaquoddy citizen of Sipayik and the Curator of Education at the Abbe Museum. They received their BA in education from the University of Maine and their MA in education policy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Their writing background includes fiction, engaging in genres such as short stories and horror, as well as lyrical poetry, with an interest in using writing as a tool for self-determination and resurgence for Indigenous people in the face of ongoing impacts of settler colonialism.

Wendy Newell Dyer is a member of the Passamaquoddy Tribe. She graduated from the University of Maine at Machias in 2003. She was a freelance writer/photographer for the Downeast Coastal Press and the Machias Valley News Observer where she covered a variety of topics including the Maine High School Basketball Tournaments. Wendy helped write educational materials for the Maine Coalition to Fight Prostate Cancer, and won a national writing contest sponsored by the Prostate Cancer Foundation and judged by actress Kristin Bell. Her story A Warrior's Homecoming appeared in Dawnland Voices: An Anthology of Indigenous Writers from New England in 2014. Several of her stories have been published in the online literary magazine Dawnland Voices 2.0, two Chicken Soup for the Soul books and in Homeschooling Today magazine. As an adoptee, Wendy testified before the Maine Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2015. She recently shared her adoption story on WERU's Dawnland Signals. She is a teacher for the Wayfinder Schools and enjoys spending her off time with her three sons, four grandsons and her black lab.

Morgan Mitchell is a young writer with an affinity for horror, based in the beautiful state of Maine. She has always loved to write and has dreamed of becoming a published author, even if self-published. She is a member of the Penobscot Indian Nation and as such, has incorporated her culture into writing wherever possible to educate and intrigue readers of all kinds. Her hope is that people will walk away from her books with newfound perspectives on common social issues while still enjoying the classic tropes and fresh ideas within the horror genre.

Sage Neptune is a member of the Penobscot Nation, of the Wabanaki Confederacy. He is currently a Graduate Student at the University of Maine in Orono, where he studies and practices Museum Decolonization. One of his favorite pastimes is writing fiction, mostly short stories that fall into a combination of Indigenous Futurism and Retro-Futurism