She will be in residence on the campus of Lake Forest College in spring 2017, where she will work to complete her winning manuscript, a novel titled An Ordered World. She will receive $10,000 and, upon editorial approval, the finished book will be published by the &NOW Books imprint of Lake Forest College Press, with distribution by Northwestern University Press. During her three-week residency on campus she will give a reading and talk to the community at large, visit classes, and meet with students to discuss writing and literature.

Whiteford is a writer from New York now living and working in Los Angeles. Her play, The Shapes We Make With Our Bodies, was published by Plays Inverse in November 2015. She and her writing have appeared at REDCAT Theater, The Women’s Center for Creative Work, MAMA Gallery, Pieter Performance Space, Coaxial, Alias Books, Last Projects, and 356 Mission in Los Angeles; Pocket Utopia in New York City; Living Copenhagen in Denmark; and The Institute for Sociometry in San Francisco. She is an active member of Los Angeles feminist communities, including the Women’s Center for Creative Work and Barbara Grossman’s Breakfast Club. She is a 2015 Juniper Scholar and 2015-2016 REEF Residency awardee. She is currently a Los Angeles critic for ArtForum, the Managing Editor of the Art Book Review, and a freelance art and book critic.

The Madeleine P. Plonsker Emerging Writers Residency Prize is awarded to an author under 40-years-old with no major book publication. This year the winner was selected by guest judge Brian Evenson. An acclaimed novelist and critic, his most recent publications include the story collection A Collapse of Horses and the novel The Open Curtain, both published by Coffee House Press. He lives in Los Angeles and is on the faculty of the School of Critical Studies at the California Institute of the Arts.

Of the winning manuscript, Evenson writes: “Energetic and compelling, this excerpt from An Ordered World creates a vivid portrait of triplet contortionists at the beginning of their careers. By turns realistic and surreal, this is a compelling piece of work that kept me interested and always slightly off-balance.”

The Madeleine P. Plonsker Emerging Writers Residency Prize 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. The previous winners are:

• Jessica Savitz, author of Hunting Is Painting, a book of poetry 
• Gretchen Henderson, author of Galerie de Difformité, a novel 
• Jose Perez Beduya, author of Throng, a book of poems 
• Elizabeth Gentry, author of Housebound, a novel 
• Cecilia K. Corrigan, author of Titanic, a book of poems 
• Matthew Nye, author of Pike and Bloom, a novel (available Fall 2015)

The 2017 Plonsker Prize will be open to poets under 40 who have yet to publish a full-length book. Click here for more information on the Plonsker Prize. Inquiries should be directed to andnow@lakeforest.edu with the subject line: Plonsker Prize.

The 2016 Madeleine P. Plonsker Emerging Writer’s Residency Prize Winner and Honorable Mentions:

Winner:

• Meg Whiteford, Los Angeles, CA: An Ordered World

Honorable Mention:

• Justin Daugherty, Atlanta, GA: Anthropocene
• Joel Hans, Tucson, AZ: What Stills Never Survives