CONWAY, Ark. (January 9, 2014)
– Hendrix writing professor Hope Coulter is the recipient of the William F. Laman Public Library System’s 2014
Laman Library Writers Fellowship.
A fiction writer and poet,
Coulter has taught creative writing at Hendrix since 1993. Her two novels The Errand of the Eye (1988) and Dry Bones (1990) were
published by August House Publishers, and her children’s picture book Uncle
Chuck’s Truck came out
in 1993 from Bradbury Press. She has previously
been a finalist for the North American
Review’s James Hearst Poetry Prize and nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
The fellowship, which has been
given yearly since 2010, awards $10,000 to a previously published Arkansas
author.
Coulter was selected for the Laman Fellowship by
a panel of literary professionals. The fellowship can go to writers working in
any genre. To encourage the creation of literature by Arkansans, for Arkansans, Laman
Library founded the Laman Library
Writers Fellowship in March 2010 to provide grants to writers
that will assist them in the writing and publishing process. Previous fellows are Grif Stockley, author of six
legal novels and several non-fiction books on race relations in Arkansas; Kevin
Brockmeier, adult novelist and children’s author; Mara Leveritt, true crime
journalist and author; and Davis McComb, whose work appears in “The Best
American Poetry” 1996 and 2008.
Coulter Bio:
Born
in New Orleans, Coulter spent her early childhood in Little Rock before moving
at age five to Alexandria, La. She
received her A.B. from Harvard and her M.F.A. from Queens University of
Charlotte.
Her
work has appeared in such journals as North
American Review, The Carolina
Quarterly, and Rattle. She recently won second place in Southwest Review’s Morton Marr poetry contest
and last year was a semifinalist for the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First
Book Award. Other honors include Arkansas’s
Porter Prize for Literary Excellence and the Short Story Award of Louisiana Life magazine.
She
lives in Little Rock with her husband, the writer (and Hendrix alumnus) Mel
White. She has three children, Caroline, Nathan, and Tom.
Founded in 1876, Hendrix College is a national leader in
engaged liberal arts and sciences education. For the sixth consecutive year,
Hendrix was named one of the country’s “Up and Coming” liberal arts colleges by
U.S. News and World Report. Hendrix is featured in the latest edition of Colleges That Change Lives: 40 Schools That Will Change
the Way You Think about Colleges,
as well as the 2014 Princeton Review’s The Best 378 Colleges, Forbes magazine's list of America's Top Colleges, and
the 2014 Fiske Guide to Colleges. Hendrix has been affiliated with the United
Methodist Church since 1884. For more information, visit www.hendrix.edu.