2026 Award Recipient - Morgan Sjogren

BLUFF, UT –  The Ellen Meloy Fund for Desert Writers has chosen Morgan Sjogren of Escalante, Utah, as the recipient of the twenty-second annual Desert Writers Award. A grant of $5,000 will support work on her book, provisionally titled “Desert Maverick.”

Congratulations to our 2026 award winner, Morgan Sjogren, for her project "Desert Maverick.”

Ms. Sjogren, a Riverside, California, native, arrived at Glen Canyon nine years ago and decided to stay. She currently lives along a Canyon tributary and spends her winters wandering the Sonoran and Mojave deserts. Her 2023 book, Path of Light: A Walk Through Colliding Legacies of Glen Canyon, retraces the early twentieth century archaeololgical and geological expeditions funded by Charles L. Bernheimer through Glen Canyon and what is today the Bears Ears National Monument. Path of Light won the Utah Book Award in 2025, along with other honors.

Her current project, “Desert Maverick,” picks up on the theme of archaeological expeditions, but focuses on the career of a little-known science pioneer, Ann Axtell Morris, who worked alongside her husband, the acclaimed archaeologist Earl Morris, but received little recognition for her contributions to the field. (Earl Morris is said to have been the inspiration for Indiana Jones.) Ann Morris was both an archeologist and an artist who, according to Ms. Sjogren, “recorded cultural sites in the Southwest with her paintbrush, developing groundbreaking methods of pictorial documentation still used today.”

Morris wrote two little-known books about her life and research, which, again in Ms. Sjogren’s words, “challenged the ethics of archaeological practices through reverence for Indigenous peoples.”

Lyons Press of Essex, Connecticut, anticipates publishing “Desert Maverick” in 2028.

Ms. Sjogren intends to use the Meloy Fund grant to visit a series of places where Ann Morris lived and worked. These include Canyon del Muerto on the Navajo Reservation, canyons along the San Juan River, and Morris’s home at Aztec Ruins, New Mexico, now a visitors center and museum. Ms. Sjogren’s travels will culminate in Mancos, Colorado, at the 2026 Pecos Archaeological Conference, which Ann Morris helped found ninety-nine years ago.

Upon receiving word that she had won the Ellen Meloy Award, Ms. Sjogren responded with a reflection: “During long stretches of desert solitude I have turned to books for companionship. I came to view Ellen Meloy as a desert spirit sister along with archaeologist Ann Axtell Morris, whose life I plan to honor in Desert Maverick. Both Meloy and Morris colorfully documented their love for living in the desert with pen and paintbrush. I cherish our shared understanding that we are part of the desert, not separate.”

She continued: “I am beyond grateful for the support of the Ellen Meloy Foundation. It is an honor to be a part of the community of desert authors and their amazing books you have bolstered over the years. My life's course is not rational, but this award reminds me to keep going, and to always trust my instincts in the desert––even if that call is to forge ever deeper to listen to the stories of friendly ghosts.”

In addition to the award winner, the Meloy board named two 2026 Runners-Up: Eleanor Whitney of Yucca Flats, California, for “Total Loss”; and Ceal Klingler of Bishop, California, for “How We Live Together.”

A group of four Meloy Fund board members along with one guest reader comprised the 2026  Awards Committee. The board members included Leanne Benton of Estes Park, Colorado; Sarah Gilman of Winthrop, Washington; Edie Lush of London, England; and Don Snow of Walla Walla, Washington. Ashley Lodato, also of Winthrop, Washington, served as a guest reader.

The Ellen Meloy Fund supports writers whose work reflects the spirit and passion for the desert embodied in Meloy’s writing and in her commitment to a “deep map of place.” Before her untimely death in 2004, Meloy published four books, numerous articles, and radio commentaries. Her last book, Eating Stone, won the John Burroughs Association Medal for 2007.  An earlier work, The Anthropology of Turquoise, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. 

More information about Ellen Meloy, the Fund for Desert Writers, and the annual award can be found at http://www.ellenmeloyfund.org.