WE REGRET THAT WE ARE NOT ABLE TO OFFER A FELLOWSHIP THIS YEAR.
The Sirenland fellowship provides travel, room and board and fees for attending The Sirenland Writers Conference in Positano , Italy . It is given to a writer who is in the process of completing a project, but has not published a book before March, 2009. The fellowship cannot be applied for; candidates are nominated by a panel of publishing professionals. All entries are read blind and the winner chosen by Dani Shapiro . The fellowship is sponsored by Antonio Sersale, the owner and manager of Le Sirenuse.
The 2010 Fellow is Bruce Machart. Bruce Machart’s fiction has appeared in One Story, Zoetrope, Story, Glimmer Train, and elsewhere, and has been anthologized in Best Stories of the American West. This October, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt will publish his debut novel, The Wake of Forgiveness, and his collection of stories, entitled Men in the Making, will follow in the fall of 2011. A graduate of the MFA program at Ohio State University , Machart currently lives and teaches in his hometown of Houston .
Sirenland would like to thank the following nominators:
- Nicole Aragi
- Maria Campbell
- The Center for Fiction
- The Dial Press
- Ecco Press
- HarperCollins
- One Story
- William Morris Agency
- Iowa Writers Workshop
- Hunter College MFA Program
- Sarah Burnes
Previous Recipients
2010: Bruce Machart - Bruce’s debut novel, The Wake of Forgiveness, is forthcoming from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in October and has been selected as a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers pick. A collection of short stories entitled Men in the Making (also with HMH) will follow in 2011. Bruce’s fiction has appeared in Zoetrope, One Story, Story, Glimmer Train, and in numerous anthologies. A graduate of the MFA program at Ohio State University, he currently lives and teaches in his hometown of Houston, Texas.
2009: Robin Black – Robin’s stories and essays have appeared in numerous publications, most recently One Story, Colorado Review, The Southern Review and The Best Creative Nonfiction, Vol. I (Norton, 2007). A three time recipient of Special Mention from the Pushcart Prize and First Prize winner of the 2005 Pirate’s Alley Faulkner/Wisdom Writing Competition (Short Story Category), Robin lives in the Philadelphia area with her husband, three children and Tibetan Terrier. Her first story collection, If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This, was published in 2010. She is at work on a novel.
2008: Saïd Sayrafiezadeh – Saïd Sayrafiezadeh’s essays and short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, The Paris Review, Columbia Journal of Literature and Art, Open City, and elsewhere. His memoir, When Skateboards Will be Free, about his experiences growing up communist in the United States, was chosen as one of the best books of 2009 by The New York Times. Saïd lives in New York City.
2007: Dalia Sofer – Dalia Sofer was born in Iran and fled in 1982, at the age of 10, to the United States with her family. She received her MFA in Fiction from Sarah Lawrence College in 2002 and has been a resident at Yaddo. She currently lives in New York City . Her acclaimed first novel, The Septembers of Shiraz, is published by Ecco Press.
