Erica Berry and Alice Rhee are Selected for Annual Alumni Writer’s Residency

by The Alliance //
Distracted Office, Digital Art by Alexandra Eason, Grade 12, Age 17, Blake High School, Tampa, FL
Distracted Office, Digital Art by Alexandra Eason, Grade 12, Age 17, Blake High School, Tampa, FL

For the second year in a row, the Alumni Council of the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards accepted applications for A Suite of One’s Own: A Writer’s Residency, created for Alumni of the Scholastic Awards. This residency is the chance for two Alums to spend a week in a suite at The Roosevelt Hotel in New York City, away from what Scholastic Awards founder Maurice R. Robinson called the “standardizing pressures of adult life” to focus on their writing.

Tina Chang, the Poet Laureate of Brooklyn, judged the competitive group of applicants and explained, “the selection was extremely difficult (probably the most difficult of my judging life) because there were truly so many worthy candidates. I’m heartened to know there are so many gifted writers practicing.”

After weeks of judging, we’re proud to announce the recipients of the 2017 Alumni Writers Residency!

Meet the Residents

Erica Berry is a Minneapolis-based essayist, an instructor and College of Liberal Arts fellow at the University of Minnesota, and the recipient of numerous literary awards. She received a Gold Medal  for poetry in the 2009 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. Erica applied to the residency on a quest to find “creative elation and focus.” During the residency, Erica will be working on her thesis: “a collection of researched, lyrical essays about fear.”

Alice Rhee is a Korean-American writer and sound artist currently based in Brooklyn, NY. She received a Gold Medal for a short story in the 2007 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. Her current project is situated in an imaginary surrealist hotel in Seoul. Alice stated, “I crave the time and space to completely immerse myself in this dream hotel world, and I believe the hotel-setting of the residency would be the ideal setting in which to further develop and create that world.”

Congratulations to Erica and Alice! Alumni of the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards are encouraged to keep in touch with us on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, where Alumni opportunities such as these are posted. Special thanks to The Roosevelt Hotel and Amazon Literary Partnership for their support of this project.