Bodwell Fellowship

at Hewnoaks Artist Colony

Joshua Bodwell served as executive director of the MWPA for almost a decade and led a revitalization of the organization. His tenure ended in 2019 when he left to become the editorial director of David R. Godine, an independent publisher located in Boston, Massachusetts.

To honor Bodwell’s service, the MWPA is excited to offer one emerging writer per year the Bodwell Fellowship. This fellowship is a collaboration between Hewnoaks Artist Colony and the MWPA. Applicants for the Bodwell Fellowship must first apply for a residency through Hewnoaks’ juried process, then each year MWPA will select one writer who meets the fellowship criteria. In addition to their residency at Hewnoaks, Bodwell Fellows will receive a $500 award and a MWPA membership for one year or an extension of their current membership.

2024 Fellow

Michele Christle writes about culture, ecology, and place. Her work has been published in Eater, Down East, Insider, The Kenyon Review, and other publications. She served in the Peace Corps in Cameroon, received an MFA in Creative Writing from UMass Amherst, and worked in nonprofit storytelling and communications for 15 years. Michele is a producer and facilitator for StoryCorps’ One Small Step program through WERU Community Radio and a founding member of Torchlight Media, a community-based multimedia studio. She lives in midcoast Maine and is currently researching elvers for a book and an experimental documentary.

Ning Sullivan was born and grew up in a turbulent time in Mainland China. She taught political economics and philosophy at college and graduate school level. In 1993, at age 35, she left China for Sweden as a visiting scholar. She later came to the United States to pursue an advanced degree in Applied Sociology and Research Methods. She taught statistics, worked as a data analyst and research consultant, and published research papers on Asian American mental health. In May 2021, she was invited to participate a reading at a Cultural Event sponsored by Boston Major’s Office: Emerging Writers from Grubstreet: A Reading and Conversation Hosted by Artist Fellow Shubha Sunder. Her short story “Mizugiwa” was published in the Massachusetts Review. She lives in Wells, with her husband.

Sampson Spadafore (they/he pronouns) is a white, neurodivergent, queer, nonbinary trans man currently living on stolen Wabanaki land known as Portland, Maine. He also identifies as a poet and writer where he centers his trans and queer experience while unpacking his mental health journey. Sampson graduated from Nazareth College of Rochester, NY with a BFA in Musical Theatre. Their passion for acting blossomed into a love for dance, choreography, lighting, and directing. Post graduation, Sampson made his way to Portland as an educator with Speak About It, a violence prevention and consent education organization. There he was trained to use performance based education to teach college and high school students across the country. Sampson now focuses his work and activism on trans and queer rights at the intersections of other oppressed identities and continues to deepen their own learning about layered intersections of anti-racism and decolonization and incorporating that into all areas of their work. He currently works as a Program Coordinator with the Maine Humanities Council and is an at-large member of MaineTransNet’s steering committee. Later this August, Sampson will be performing as the character Heath in the play Pony by Sylvan Oswald, as part of the first annual Portland Theater Festival.

Like many residency programs around the country, Hewnoaks was closed in 2020 and carried its residents over to 2021 and 2022. So the MWPA Board chose two inaugural Bodwell Fellows, one for 2020 and one for 2021. The first two Bodwell Fellows are Alexandre Mas and Sam Collier.

In 2019, Alexandre Mas took a novel writing workshop at MWPA that did what it promised: it lit a fuse. He is now hard at work on his first novel, which he hopes to complete with the help of his first artist residency, at Hewnoaks. Alex's short stories have been published in The Georgia Review, The Antioch Review, Southwest Review, and The San Francisco Bay Guardian. He has also worked for more than twenty-five years on land and water conservation, and is currently the Associate State Director for The Nature Conservancy in Maine. Alex has a master’s degree in Ecological Management from the University of Michigan and undergraduate degrees in Environmental Studies and English from Tufts University. He lives in Portland with his wife and three children.

Sam Collier is a playwright and poet. Her play DAISY VIOLET THE BITCH BEAST KING, which explores the joys and rages of girlhood, was the winner of the 2019 Modern Works Festival at Urbanite Theatre. Her play A HUNDRED CIRCLING CAMPS, which examines the Bonus Army March of 1932 and the history of American protest camps, was commissioned by the Goodman Theatre Playwrights Unit. Other plays include THING WITH FEATHERS (2019 Women’s Theatre Festival) and SILO TREE (2019 Theatre Nova Playwrights Festival). Her plays have also been developed and presented by Flexible Grey Theatre Company, New College of Florida, the UC Davis Ground and Field Festival, the Last Frontier Theatre Conference, the Chicago Theatre Marathon, PTP/NYC, and Theater Nyx. She co-hosts the playwriting podcast Beckett’s Babies. Collier’s poems have appeared in Claw & Blossom, What Rough Beast, Iron Horse Literary Review, Mortar Magazine, Sixfold, The Puritan, Guernica, and elsewhere. She is working on her first collection.

Location

Hewnoaks is located on Kezar Lake in Lovell, a ninety-minute drive from Portland. Please click here for more information about Hewnoaks’ history, facilities, and past residents. 

Costs
There is a $25 application fee to apply to Hewnoaks. Applicants for whom that fee is a hardship should contact Hewnoaks during the application process. Bodwell Fellows receive a cabin for one to two weeks, along with the $500 stipend.

Studio & Housing
Basic studio space is provided in a rustic cabin with a bathroom, kitchen, and sleeping quarters. During the application process, applicants will indicate their preferred residency dates and if they wish to share space with someone else who is also applying.

Meals
Residents at Hewnoaks bring their own food and prepare their own meals in the kitchen provided.

Companions
Spouses, partners, and children are not allowed at this residency. Hewnoaks does offer cash support to parent artists with childcare needs. Please see the Hewnoaks website for more information and frequently asked questions.

To be eligible, all applicants must

• live in Maine at least 6 months a year;

• be first time artist/writers colony residents (“colony” defined as any residency focused on time/space to work and not on learning/education);

• be emerging, meaning they have not published a full-length collection in the genre of the writing project they’re working on and applying with (self-published collections and/or chapbooks of any kind do not count).

All applications to Hewnoaks must be received by Monday, March 2, 2020. Following Hewnoaks’ juried selection process, MWPA will convene a small jury of accomplished writers to select the Bodwell Fellow from the eligible Hewnoaks residents. The winner’s application will show a combination of specific intentions for the residency and great writing. We strongly encourage applications from people who are members of marginalized communities in terms of race, ethnicity, geography, income, and/or gender identification. We will announce the first Bodwell Fellow during the spring of 2020.

Donate

If you would like to honor Joshua Bodwell and support emerging Maine writers, please make a tax-deductible donation by clicking the button below and note that you wish to support the Bodwell Fellowship.