2009 Writers Retreat Scholars

New England Writer's Scholarship - Kumkum Pareek Malek

Kumkum Pareek Malik is a clinical psychologist who has built a niche practice on Motherhood. She believes that most of the issues affecting the mental health of a mother have to do with the invisibility and lack of respect for a mother's unpaid work on behalf of her family. Kumkum takes a Mind Body Approach to the work, believing that motherhood is an immersion experience that affects a woman's mind, body and soul.

Presently Kumkum is immersed in designing and offering workshops for mothers who wish to mother from their strengths. She writes "words that we all need, but don't have," speaks with "the vibrancy we must have if we are to age well," and hopes to write about "A Mothers Journey" to share what she has learned from the awesome mothers she has worked with. She will be bringing her writing related to naming A Mother's Journey to the retreat.

Kumkum grew up in India, and came to the United States for Graduate Study. In addition to her doctoral degree, she has two Master's Degrees (Delhi University and the Harvard Graduate School of Education). However, she believes that her most valued credential is the humility she experiences when sitting with women as they make meaning of their complex lives.

Pincus Scholarship for Public Teachers - Jennifer Green

Jennifer Green is a school teacher in Trinidad, Colorado. After touring internationally with dance and theater companies based in NYC, she returned to her home state to pursue writing and teaching. She lives on a small ranch with her dogs and horses. Her published work includes articles on teaching (Christian Science Monitor , 1999), biographical essays (Woven on the Wind, Houghton Mifflin, 2001) and stories for children (Highlights Magazine, 2005-8.)

New Mexico Woman Writer's Scholarship - Nena Villamil

Nena Villamil holds a BA in English Literature at Louisiana State University and a MFA from New Mexico State University. Currently, she lives on a lavender farm in Nambe, NM and feels extremely blessed to be doing so. As a graduate student, she taught freshman and sophomore English classes at NMSU and worked as a coordinator at NMSU's Writing Center. Nena also taught for Upward Bound program, a program encouraging low-income youth to pursue college. She runs an Upward Bound program for students in Pojoaque and Ojo Caliente, NM. When not working, you can find her with her dog Pepper on their favorite hiking trail in Nambe, likely with a piece of cheese or chocolate in hand.

Tillie Olson Single Mother's Fund - Marie-Francoise Theodore

Marie-Francoise Theodore is an interdisciplinary artist of Haitian descent working in film, television and theatre as writer, actor and filmmaker. A native of Chicago IL, she resides in Los Angeles, CA with her son Aaron. She is a 2006 Film Independent Fellow and recipient of a 2006 Women In Film/General Motors Acceleration Grant for Emerging Filmmakers. In 2007, Marie-Francoise received a Frances E. Williams Artist Grant for Writing to attend Natalie Goldberg's 'Old Friend, Far Away' Memoir Writing Retreat in Sante Fe, NM.

Marie-Francoise is currently working on her memoir Not A Proper Haitian Girl, which chronicles her Chicago childhood in the 1970s-- from placement in an orphanage at birth through to her natural mother's subsequent marriage to Marie-Francoise's foster-mother's nephew. The memoir explores the complex relationships of an extended foster and natural family and the consequences of memory and identity for a young girl.

Retreat Alumni Scholarship - Edite Kunha

I like to lie alone on the picnic table under the arbor. I don't tell anyone. People think it is a sickness...wanting to be alone. Even my own mother. I lie on the table looking at one grape leaf. You may think that a leaf is a leaf, but my eyes choose only one...not always the same one, but just one. And always, one next to a patch of blue. You may think that blue is blue, but the shape of blue depends on which leaf it is next to and also, on how the wind blows. You may think that a girl is a girl. I lie alone on the table, looking up at one leaf. What is a grape leaf? I think. What is blue? The wind rustles the one leaf with the others and shifts the shape of blue. What do I want? I think. To be a leaf. To be the wind that can shift the shape of things, even blue. Up above the arbor, my mother throws my name out the upstairs window. It sails down through blue, sifts through leaves, pelts me, changing the weather. I don't answer. She cannot see me hidden under leaves that all look the same to her, but aren't. I shift my eyes back to the one. This leaf has blood, like me, and roots. I think Who is it's mother? I think. (From: Talking The New Land)

Edite Cunha lives and writes in the hills of Western Massachusetts. She has a BA from Smith College and an MFA from Warren Wilson College. She is working on a novel: Talking The New Land, and Visitations, a collection of stories.

Ducky Scholarship #1 - Kayleen Dunsen

Smart. Simple. Funny. Kind.

Kayleen's blood type is B-positive, which is also her life philosophy. As president of her own communications consulting business, Kayleen helps others develop the right messages to reach the right audiences. She also works with leadership teams, non-profit boards, and staff groups to encourage teamwork, respectful leadership, and high employee morale. Kayleen is an award-winning humorous speaker with an engaging and energetic style.

Kayleen earned her MFA in writing from Goddard College where she worked intensively with Rebecca Brown, Darcey Steinke, Douglas A. Martin, and Alexander Chee. Her creative non-fiction piece, Salty Kiss, appears in the Pitkin Review, and an excerpt from her as yet unpublished novel, Fleshology in Parts, earned a semi-finalist award for Gertrude Press.

Kayleen is thrilled to be returning to the AROHO retreat in 2009; the 2005 retreat sparked the let's-really-get-serious-about-writing moment that ignited her application to graduate school – and changed her life.

In addition to writing, Kayleen loves her work as a softball umpire and basketball referee. For fun she likes to backpack, kayak, and fly fish, and is an avid birder.

Kayleen hangs in a small cottage-style home in Seattle, Washington with her amazing partner (also a writer – yes, it can be done), a mutt of a puppy who rescued her after the passing of her mother (he lets her think she rescued him), and two ancient cats.

Ducky Scholarship #2 - Elna Baker

Elna Baker is a writer, comedic storyteller and monologist. She's performed her stories for This American Life, Studio 360, The Moth, Upright Citizens Brigade, The PIT, The Magnet and at many other comedy clubs throughout New York City. A graduate of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts Elna's acted Off-Broadway and on London's West End. From 2003-2008 she performed in two People's Improv Theater house teams. As a solo-performer she created the shows IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING (which premiered at FringeNYC2006) MEXICAN-MORMON (La Mama Etc. dir.Liz Swados) and A BOOK OF OVER-DRAMATIC CONFESSIONS.

Elna's written for ELLE Magazine, Glamour and Five Dials. In 2007 and 2008 she was awarded residencies at both the MacDowell and Yaddo Artist Colonies. She's currently a NY Public Library Allen fellow. Her memoir The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance will be published by Penguin in 2009.To hear Elna's stories visit: www.elnabaker.com.

Creative Women Scholarship #1 - Veronica Golos

Veronica Golos is the author of A Bell Buried Deep, co-winner of the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize (Story Line Press) and nominated for a 2004 Pushcart Prize by Edward Hirsch. Her work was a finalist for the Ann Stanford Prize and for the Tupelo Press Prize. She was a 2003 and 2005 recipient of three-month artist's residencies at the Wurlitzer Foundation of Taos, New Mexico. She is also the author of the chapbook, No Ordinary Women. Presently, she is working on a new book of poems, The Vocabulary of Silence.

From 1999-2003 Ms. Golos was the Artistic Director for Literary Programs at the Sol Goldman 14th Street Y, in New York City. She curated the award-winning series, WhYwords and received the Jolson Foundation Grant, Axe Houghton Foundation Grant, JPAAA Award, ERCA Creative Achievement Awards. Ms Golos taught poetry and multi-genre writing for Poets&Writers, Poets House, and Makor (92nd St Y).

In Taos, New Mexico, she works in collaboration with The Rane Gallery on their Ekphrasis Project as a coordinator and poet. She teaches creative writing for adults at Yaxche School, and will be teaching poetry for University of New Mexico.

Creative Women Scholarship #2 - Joy Tomasco

Joy Tomasko is the 2009 Playwright-in-Residence at Women's Project, where her new play TALK SOON, a collaboration with choreographer Martha Mason, visual artist Wendy Richmond, and director Meiyin Wang, is in development with the support of the New York State Council on the Arts. Her play UNFOLD ME was presented off-Broadway at Arielle Tepper's Summer Play Festival. MY END has been developed at the Lark, Soho Think Tank, The Playwrights Center and most recently at Nautilus Music-Theater's Rough Cuts with music composed by Andrew Lynch. Site-specific work includes ROSE PIE for the Community Garden on Ave. B and KEEP THE CHANGE co-written with playwright Christina Gorman for Women's Project and the World Financial Center. Joy worked as a writer alongside Cuban playwright Agnieska Hernández on the US-Cuba collaboration THE CLOSEST FARTHEST AWAY/ ENTRAÑABLE LEJANÌA, a theater/film hybrid premiering at the Havana Film Festival in December. A Women's Project Lab Alumni, Joy received her MFA at CalArts under the mentorship of Erik Ehn and Suzan-Lori Parks. Prior to CalArts, Joy assisted John Dias, Bonnie Metzgar and George C. Wolfe at The Public Theater on and off-Broadway and at The Delacorte Theater in Central Park. She's taught classes at Fordham University, CalArts and workshops in the Twin Cities. An avid traveler, she's studied and workshopped in other countries including the Czech Republic, Serbia, Rwanda, and Uganda. Joy was a recent MacDowell Colony Fellow and a Jerome Fellow at The Playwright's Center in Minneapolis where she will have a reading of her new play ARDEN in June.

Audacious Writer Scholarship - Carlee Tressel

Carlee Tressel is the author of essays, poems, and short stories. Her most recent work of fiction was runner-up in the Sport Literature Association's Sport Literature Contest in 2008 and will appear in a forthcoming edition of Aethlon. Her poem, "Second Love," can be found on the sidewalks of St. Paul, Minnesota, as part of the permanent installation, Everyday Poems for City Sidewalk. She is completing an MFA in the Graduate School of Liberal Studies at Hamline University (St. Paul, MN), where she has served on the prose editorial board of the literary annual, Water~Stone Review. A native of Youngstown, Ohio, Carlee has gradually moved westward through the heart of the country, doing her undergraduate work at the University of Chicago and participating in the Chicago performance poetry community. These days, she calls the Twin Cities home.

Marg Chandler Memorial Scholarship - Lauren Baldwin

Lauren Baldwin is a writer, lawyer, fanatical knitter, and mother who "came home" to the Southwest nearly thirty years ago and never left. Originally from Connecticut and Maine, she also has lived in Hong Kong and England and now lives in a bilingual Cuban-American household with her partner and two children. Lauren currently is a candidate for the MFA in Creative Writing at Vermont College of Fine Arts. She received a B.A. in English from The Colorado College and a J.D. from the University of New Mexico (her law school thesis was a creative writing project about judges as conscientious objectors to the death penalty for which she earned the University of New Mexico School of Law Thesis Honors Award). Lauren has a first novel in progress and also writes poetry, creative non-fiction and plays. She has attended every AROHO retreat since its inception and can be seen one Sunday every other summer driving from Albuquerque to Ghost Ranch in a Toyota 4Runner filled to the brim with beverages and assorted hors d'oeuvres for the AROHO retreat receptions, a labor of love that honors the old saying, "Mi casa es tu casa!"

Volunteer Coordinator (Work-Study) - Cathy Kirkwood

Catherine Kirkwood holds an MFA in Creative Writing, Goddard University, a DPhil in Women's Studies from the University of York, England, and a Bachelor of Science. Her fiction and creative non-fiction has appeared in anthologies and her non-fiction text, Leaving Abusive Partners, has been translated and sold internationally. Her novel Cut Away, Arktoi Books, an imprint of Red Hen Press, is forthcoming in April 2010 (http://www.arktoi.com/books/cut.shtml).

Born in Los Angeles, Catherine now lives in Seattle.

AROHO Community Organizer (Work-Study) - Bridget Birdsall

Bridget is a healer, writer, poet, teacher and a visual artist. She has a degree in Marketing Management from Creighton University in Omaha Nebraska and an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College in Montpelier, Vermont. She has been teaching classes in Creative Writing, Poetry, World Literature and Marketing at both Edgewood College and Madison Area Technical School. She is currently completing a two-year certification in a form of energy healing known as Soul Awareness Healing. This summer Bridget will be offering "W(rite) to Heal" workshops at Wonewoc Spiritualist Camp in central Wisconsin. She has also recently begun offering services in various healing modalities, including intuitive healing telephone consultations with her business: Inner Light Healing Arts.

Bridget recently finished her third novel "Ordinary Angels," an autobiographical fictionalized coming-of-age account of a girl dealing with the violent and mysterious death of her brother. Her first two YA novels recently made it to the top of the pile at a reputable publishing house before it unexpectedly closed its doors: "August Atlas" is the story of a child born with ambiguous genitalia who changes genders at the age of fifteen, and "Bringing Home Divine" is the story of a spunky cowgirl struggling against a backdrop of fear and homophobia to define for herself the true meaning of family. Bridget lives with her son, Quinn, in Madison, Wisconsin. Samples of her art, writing, awards and publications can be viewed at www.bridgetbirdsall.com.

AROHO Community Organizer (Work-Study) - Marguerite María Rivas

Marguerite holds a Doctor of Arts and Letters from Drew University specializing in the American long poem and a Master's Degree in English from CUNY, specializing in British Restoration and Elizabethan poetry. In addition to her scholarly work, Rivas is a poet who reads in and around New York City and at national conferences. Rivas's essays, articles, book reviews, and poetry have been published in The Americas Review, The Multicultural Review, and Earth's Daughters, among other publications. She is the recipient of numerous grants and awards including re-grants from The New York State Council on the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. Rivas was cited by the New York State Legislature for her contribution to the literary arts. She was the recipient of the first Marg Chandler Memorial Award from A Room of Her Own Foundation. Her chapbook, Poetry Cannot Save You, was published in 2003 with a second printing in 2005. She is currently completing her manuscript of lyric poetry, Laughter, Hope & A Sock in the Eye, which is based on her experience as a single mother working and going to school and as a survivor of domestic abuse. In addition to writing for the page, Rivas performs improvisational verse with her band, Elektromótif. She is an Assistant Professor of English at Borough of Manhattan Community College where she teaches creative writing and the literature of U.S. Latino/as. At BMCC, she is a member of the Women's Studies Project and regularly serves as a committee member for Women's Herstory Month and Hispanic Heritage Month.