Female Poet Wins the sixth $50,000 Gift of Freedom Award

March 20, 2013 - PRLog -- Female Poet Wins the Sixth $50,000 Gift of Freedom Award

Press Contact:  Tracey Cravens-Gras, 505-273-1859, tracey@aroomofherownfoundation.org, www.aroho.org (x-msg://101/)

Placitas, NM. (AROHO) A Room of Her Own Foundation is pleased to announce Diane Gilliam as the winner of its Sixth $50,000 Gift of Freedom award:  the largest award for women writers supporting the completion and publication of an imagined yet unwritten creative work.

The Gift of Freedom process searches for work that is moving, writing that takes risks, and writers who work and live at a level of mastery and excellence.  All of that was found in poet Diane Gilliam. Gilliam tells women’s urgent stories in poetry that is both stunning and accessible.  Her recent work illuminates her interest in the interactive role myths, fairy tales, and other received stories play in how we become who we mean to be.

In her proposed grant project, a book of poems tentatively titled The Blackbirds Too,  Gilliam will map the course of “identity accomplished by breakage of the structures a person might depend on to become someone:  work, knowledge, marriage, family, goodness.  The culture at large defines our first versions of such things and it seems inevitable that as we grow into ourselves the received definitions begin to fail us.”

Gilliam applied for the $50,000 award because of her “real need,” and describes the Gift of Freedom grant as “actual, practical help for women who need to do their work in a world that often doesn’t know how much it needs that work, and as a sacred trust that heartens us, binds us to our work and to each other.”

Born in Columbus, Ohio, Gilliam’s parents were part of the post-war Appalachian outmigration, from Mingo County West Virginia and Johnson County Kentucky.  Her first book, One of Everything, tells the stories of four generations of women in her family.  Kettle Bottom, her second book, is written in the voices of people living in the coal camps at the time of the 1920-21 West Virginia Mine Wars.  Kettle Bottom won several prizes, including a Pushcart Prize and the Ohioana Library Association Book of the Year in Poetry.  Gilliam also won the 2008 Chaffin Award for Appalachian Writing.

Gilliam lives in Akron, Ohio, where she works as both poet and quilter.  She has a Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Literatures from Ohio State University, and an MFA from Warren Wilson College.

Finalists for the award were Florencia Ramirez of Oxnard, California, and Ire’ne Lara Silva of Austin, Texas.  Creative Nonfiction Genre Finalist Florencia Ramirez’ proposed creative project, Eat Less Water, is an environmental anthem for our time backed by a strong literary voice.  Fiction Genre Finalist Ire’ne Lara Silva’s award-winning work speaks for those on the margins, in a fierce, primal voice which stands at the intersection of poetry and prose.  Genre finalists receive a $5,000 prize and professional mentorship to assist in the completion of their projects.

A Room of Her Own Foundation (x-msg://101/) (AROHO), is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization formed in 2000 to support and advance the work of women in the literary and artistic marketplace.  It has dedicated more than $1,000,000 to further the causes of creative women through its Gift of Freedom Awards (x-msg://101/), Orlando Prizes (x-msg://101/), To the Lighthouse (x-msg://101/) poetry book prizes, fellowships, retreats (x-msg://101/), public readings, Day Conferences, Book Club, and web-based resource center.