Application Guidelines
2009 Deadline: November 20, 2009
Eligibility qualifications:
- Applicants should have been residents of Southern Arizona for at least three years.
- Applicants should be an active participant in local writing communities, including but not limited to writing groups, workshops, and public reading series (including open mic).
- Applicants should demonstrate a maturity of craft and a dedication to the mastery of poetry.
- Bilingual writers or poets who write in a language other than English will be considered as long as the poems are submitted with an English translation.
- Preference will be given to applicants who have not yet received significant national recognition in the form of publications or awards.
- University of Arizona faculty, staff, and students are not eligible.
- Current and former Poetry Center staff are ineligible to receive scholarship.
To apply for the Mary Ann Campau Memorial Fellowship, submit a packet to:
Campau Fellowship Committee, UA Poetry Center
1508 E. Helen St.
Tucson, AZ 85721-0150
Application packets should include the following information:
- Your name, address, phone number(s), and email address.
- A 300-word statement outlining your accomplishments and contribution to the literary arts, evidence of your active participation in the local poetry community, the impact of your work or contributions in your community.
- A writing sample of your work (up to ten pages of poetry).
The Fellowship will be awarded by the Mary Ann Campau Fellowship Committee: William Pitt Root, Pamela Uschuk, Tony Luebbermann, and representatives from the University of Arizona Poetry Center. Please do not send queries directly to the committee. Contacting committee members in an attempt to influence the outcome of the award is discouraged and may result in disqualification.
The Mary Ann Campau Memorial Fellowship for Southern Arizona Poets recognizes talented writers who strengthen and inspire our literary landscape.
The Fellowship provides a $1000 stipend and an opportunity to read in the Poetry Center Reading Series.
Fellows are selected through juried selection.
Past Winners:
Stephanie Balzer, 2008 Fellow
Maria Elena Wakamatsu, 2007 Fellow
A resident of Tucson for forty years, Mary Ann Campau was a devoted supporter of poetry and poets in our community. She was a well-known and much-loved public school teacher who retired in 1989, when she began to take workshops at the Poetry Center with Richard Siken and Richard Shelton and then through the Writing Works Center with William Pitt Root and Pamela Uschuk. These workshops sparked a passion for poetry and a dedication to her local poetry community. Mary Ann hosted writing classes with guest poets in her own home;
provided "grants" to writers who could not otherwise afford to attend these and other workshops; she attended, supported, and participated in numerous local reading series; and through her own enthusiasm she cultivated new audiences for poetry. Her poems were published in local journals, including Sandcutters and The Tucson Poet and
in 2001 she published a full-length collection of her own poetry, Like a Waterweed Ghost. In the spirit of Mary Ann Campau, this fellowship is offered to recognize poets who work actively and consistently to support poetry in the Tucson area.