My loves, I can’t tell you how honored I am to be among the Sustainable Arts Awardees of 2023. This beautiful organization supports parenting artists internationally with annual awards. The Sustainable Arts Foundation shares information about how to support parenting artists, boosts our work, and the award comes with a generous check of $5000 and also chocolate! Being materially supported as a parenting artist and seeing the accomplishments of other parenting artists valued materially means the world.
In case anyone reading this is interested in applying, here’s my story: In 2022 I applied with an essay I had published and was named a finalist. This year I applied with an unpublished essay—and the essay that will be the opening chapter of the memoir I’m working on, Broken Home. It describes how I knocked down a support wall in the house I just bought. Nothing like a good metaphor, eh?
In my artist’s statement for the application, I wrote about the book as a whole—Broken Home traces one woman’s quest to repair a home broken by divorce, abandonment, and sledgehammers!—and described some of the essays, which take the reader to different communities in the world I’ve lived in, all in search of home.
In my artist’s statement I also talked about my work outside of creative nonfiction—namely the teaching I do and the work I’m involved in with EncantaPalabras in Colombia on writing for peace. The thing about writing this statement is that I began to see more clearly how my teaching / outreach / collaborative work is of a piece with my creative / personal work. How valuing my own stories and valuing the stories of others are of a piece.
I’m so grateful the committee also found that connection meaningful. And I’m so grateful they read (and liked!) my sample chapter.
Huge congratulations to the other awardees and finalists and huge thank you to Caroline and Tony Grant. I still cannot believe my name is on the list.
Here are their names. Check out their work!
2023 Awards ($5,000 each)
Katrina Andry, Printmaking
Nicole Callihan, Poetry
Jung Hae Chae, Creative Nonfiction
Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach, Poetry
Teresa Dunn, Painting
Angela Fraleigh, Painting
Cynthia Harmony, Illustrated Children's Books
Jessie Henson, Mixed Media
Elissa C. Huang, Fiction
Flora Kao, Installation
Jami Nakamura Lin, Fiction
Paula Mans, Mixed Media
Sahar Muradi, Poetry
Joy Notoma, Fiction
Preeti Parikh, Poetry
Maria Veronica San Martin, Book Arts
Thao Thai, Fiction
Ziui Chen Vance, Painting
Kate Vieira, Creative Nonfiction
Jan-Ru Wan 萬珍如, Installation
2023 Finalists
Dina Abdulkarim, Painting
Lisa Alonzo, Painting
Rickey Fayne, Fiction
Sarah Kilch Gaffney, Creative Nonfiction
Linda M. Ganjian, Sculpture
Kate Gaskin, Poetry
Sylee Gore, Poetry
Andrae Green, Painting
Sabrina Gschwandtner, Mixed Media
Caroline Holder, Ceramics
Carolina Hotchandani, Poetry
Daniela Miljana Kovacic, Painting
Rochelle Marrett, Fiction
Ayana Ross, Painting
Denise Silva, Illustration
Annabelle Tometich, Creative Nonfiction
Paige Towers, Creative Nonfiction
Claire Wahmanholm, Poetry
Teresa Wong, Graphic Novel/Graphic Memoir
Charity E. Yoro, Poetry