Announcing the 2020 Desert Writers Award recipient!

The Ellen Meloy Fund for Desert Writers has chosen Hannah Hindley of Tucson, Arizona, as the recipient of the fifteenth annual Desert Writers Award. A grant of $5,000 will support work on her writing proposal, titled “Lazarus in the Desert: Death and Life in Arizona’s Endangered Waterways.”

Ms. Hindley is currently a graduate student seeking a Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing at the University of Arizona. Her essays and articles have appeared in numerous publications, including Terrain, Harvard Review, Territory Magazine, and River Teeth. Her work over the past decade as a writer and wilderness guide has taken her to Alaska, Mexico, California’s High Sierra, Hawaii, and Washington.

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“In the desert there is everything and there is nothing. Stay curious. Know where you are—your biological address. Get to know your neighbors—plants, creatures, who lives there, who died there, who is blessed, cursed, what is absent or in danger or in need of your help. Pay attention to the weather, to what breaks your heart, to what lifts your heart. Write it down.”

— E.M. November 2004

Our Mission:

We provide support to writers whose work reflects the spirit and passions embodied in Ellen’s writing and her commitment to a “deep map of place.”

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About

The Ellen Meloy Fund for Desert Writers sends the willing and talented out to the desert to write. An annual cash award of $5,000 provides recognition and a small base of financial support for exceptional writers of the desert who wish to spend creative time in a desert environment and carry on in the spirit of Ellen Meloy.

All good writing finds voice in place and experience; really good nature writing lives in the field. Ellen Meloy breathed the desert air and wrote. Her voice was strong and sure because her inspiration was direct. Ellen was widely recognized for her excellence, which gave birth to four books, all collections of essays, largely about human connections to wilderness, deserts, and rivers. No river trip, hike, or car camp was complete without her journal.

Ellen Meloy's sudden death on November 4, 2004, sent waves of shock and sorrow from her red rock home in Bluff, Utah. She contributed a sensual lodestone, a shining river cobble to the literature of natural history, science, and the southwest. A world of readers, friends, and family seek to illuminate and honor her legacy of words through a memorial fund, established to empower other writers with a place in the desert.

Support the Fund

The Ellen Meloy Fund offers a yearly award of $5,000 to an individual of similar passion and desire to write about the desert from the desert. The level of support and number of awards will increase as the principal of the fund develops through effective fundraising and investment.

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