Admissions

Lake Forest, Ill. – Lake Forest College is pleased to recognize Gretchen Henderson as the second winner of the Madeleine P. Plonsker Emerging Writer’s Residency, given to an author under forty years old with no major book publication. Henderson, who lives in Gambier, Ohio, is currently working on a manuscript of fiction titled Galerie de Difformité, and she will begin her residency in early February 2010.

“The Plonsker Prize is a dream come true,” says Henderson. “For someone to believe in my work and support it in this multi-dimensional capacity is an immeasurable gift, which only will continue to give.”

Henderson earned a Ph.D. in English from the University of Missouri, an M.F.A from Columbia and a B.A. in history from Princeton University. Henderson also studied voice at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. She has taught creative writing and literature at Knox College, the University of Missouri, Barnard College, and at the high school level. Her fellowships include artist residencies from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, and Vermont Studio Center, with genre-bending publications in varied journals including The Iowa Review, Denver Quarterly, New American Writing, Black Warrior Review, Notre Dame Review, Fourteen Hills, The Southern Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Caketrain, and elsewhere.

Among other awards, her work has been runner-up for the AWP Award Series in the Novel and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Galerie de Difformité, whose narrator imitates the curator of an art gallery, takes the reader through several exhibits, or chapters, that engage varied genres (fiction, poetry, scholarship, illustration) and entwine linear and non-linear literacies to construct and deconstruct itself. Some excerpts from Galerie de Difformité, can be found here.

Each spring, in conjunction with the &NOW Festival, residents will spend two months on the College’s campus completing a manuscript, participating in the annual Lake Forest Literary Festival, offering a series of public presentations, and they receive a $10,000 stipend. Their completed manuscript will be published (upon approval) by the &NOW Books imprint of Lake Forest College Press, with distribution by Northwestern University Press. Henderson will read with the 2010 Lake Forest Literary Festival keynote authors, Vanessa Place and Shelley Jackson.

Additionally, Henderson and the 2009 Plonsker Resident, Jessica Savitz, will be featured readers at the 4th Biennial &NOW Festival, to be held from October 14-17 at the University at Buffalo. Savitz’s poetry collection, Hunting is Painting will be released in the first half of 2010.

The residency is made possible by a donation from a local philanthropist who was impressed by the College’s recently established publishing enterprise, Lake Forest College Press / &NOW BOOKS.

“We are thrilled to find, in Gretchen Henderson, a writer of great promise, wit, and skill. She will add immeasurably to the creative writing program during her stay, and confirm the Plonsker Residency as one of the top U.S. prizes for new work,” Associate Professor of English and Director of Lake Forest College Press / &NOW Books Davis Schneiderman said.

Emerging prose writers under forty years old, with no major book publication, interested in applying for the 2011 residency (poetry and cross genre) should send: Curriculum vita; no more than 30 pages of manuscript in progress; and a one-page statement of plans for completion to Plonsker Residency, Department of English, Lake Forest College, Box A16, 555 N. Sheridan Road, Lake Forest, IL 60045. Submissions must be postmarked by April 1, 2010 for consideration by judges Robert Archambeau, Davis Schneiderman, and Joshua Corey. Direct inquiries to andnow@lakeforest.edu with the subject line: Plonsker Prize.

The 2010 The Madeleine P. Plonsker Emerging Writer's Residency Prize Finalists:

Gretchen Henderson, Galerie de Difformité (Winner)

Brian Anderson -- Phrasebook (Nanjing)
Amanda Ackerman -- A Survey of American Languages
Stephanie Carpenter -- Moral Treatment/Case Studies
Jennifer S. Cheng -- Parachutes: A Book of Shut
Addie E. Citchens -- Flood
Scott R. Duncan -- Ramona, My Inheritance
Sutherland Douglass -- The End Times Robert Blake
Bernadette M. Esposito -- Pan Pan Pan: The Unlikely Event Of
Chloe Fields -- Self-Proclaimed Self-Help Group
Tina May Hall -- Love Letters Between Corpses
Colleen Hollister -- Collage With Girl and Rooftop
Matthew Kirkpatrick -- Light Without
Janice Lee -- Daughter
James Pate -- The Participant: Stories
Ric Royer -- She Saw Ghosts, He Saw Bodies
Suzanne Scanlon -- Nubile Women
Michael H. Stewart -- Strange Sympathies
Azareen Van der Viliet Oloomi -- The Holy City, Dream & the Traveler
Ryan Wirick -- Invisible Escalators

Lake Forest College is a national liberal arts institution located 30 miles north of downtown Chicago. The College has 1,400 students representing 45 states and 69 countries.

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Will Pittinos '06
847-635-6177
pittinos@lakeforest.edu