Philadelphia.
Pew Charitable Trusts give arts grants of $30,000 each in the tri-state area of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware.
In three tries, I was a Finalist twice.
The first and third entries were in Literature. The second entry was a Crafts year. I had at that point not made any crafts save for sewing, but I entered anyway. The winner was a Hmong refugee who wrote that she had to sew quilts for money, but would like to make a big piece, "to be remembered by."
By the fourth year (1997) I had already moved to DC, and so was not eligible to apply.
For the She-Monkey finalist position (among the first 76 of about 750 entries)
my friends bought me a cake with my book title on it.
Shee-Monkey is a book-length poem based on the Chinese folk novel Monkey, but with a female protagonist and a human rights story.
KMKaung
www.kmkaung.com
5-5-2014
