MFAW-WA alumna, Simone John, has been awarded a poetry fellowship from the Mass Cultural Council. You can find the announcement here. The fellowship comes with $15,000 in unrestricted funds, in order to support her work on her current project: Motherwit, a biomythography that explores healing and inheritance through the eyes of a poet researching her dead godmother. Motherwit is a compilation of this research: real and fictionalized family interviews; invented archival materials; spells, prayers, and procedurals drawn from black folk healing traditions. Family lore is reimagined as folktales. Together these poems recover old wisdom, reminding readers that our stories are our medicine.
Congratulations, Simone!