Announcing our 2020 winner and finalists
While we all do our best to stay safe and healthy and support those around us, we’ve also been reading applications...and are thrilled to announce the winner of our 2020 award!
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.”
Three finalists have also been recognized for their projects:
Taylor Cunningham of Salt Lake City, Utah, “Ecologies of Thirst”
Steven Saum of San Jose, California, “The Geography of Hell”
Emily Withnall of Missoula, Montana, “Fracture”
About our winner
2020 award winner Hannah 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.
Hannah Hindley is a student of the phenomenon known as “Lazarus taxa.” In her application she explained, “When I was a college student, I worked for a year as a research assistant for a visiting scientist whose project was to compile a database of Lazarus taxa: animals that, like biblical Saint Lazarus, seemed to rise from the dead like so many furred and feathered miracles. I spent the year as a biological detective, tracking down headlines and scientific studies that showed the return of extinct animals to landscapes from which they’d disappeared decades, possibly centuries, ago.”
Upon her arrival at the University of Arizona, she learned of Lazarus taxa in the immediate vicinity. She said, “The Gila topminnow is a silvery little fish that disappeared from the Santa Cruz River 70 years ago, around the same time that the river itself dried up. A couple of years ago, when the City of Tucson elected to refill a stretch of the Santa Cruz with treated effluent, the topminnow returned.”
Intrigued, Ms. Hindley set out to research other examples of Lazarus taxa in the Sonoran Desert. “I’m interested in telling the story of flowing water in the Sonoran Desert,” she said, “tracking down thinning aquifers and endangered fish, dry deltas and effluent-dependent rivers. Arizona is a hot, dry place—growing hotter and drier—but it is also home to fish, and glistening creeks, and improbable stories of riparian ecosystems recovering in the heart of urban sprawl.”
Ms. Hindley sees her work as being much in the spirit of writer Ellen Meloy. She said, “I’m so honored to be chosen for this year’s award, and I’m giddy to be included in the lineup of beautiful writers who have come before me to carry on Ellen Meloy’s legacy. Everything feels so tenuous right now, in the face of pandemic and climate disruption and all the other upheavals at hand, but getting this award reminds me that I have important work to do and support to make it happen. It fuels my excitement for the research that lies ahead.”
We couldn’t be more excited ourselves! Here’s what some of our board members had to say about Hannah Hindley’s proposal:
“I loved this smart, literate, clear-eyed young writer. She wades down river netting fish, she sniffs out research, she intuits connections, she writes graceful, lyrical prose. In her investigation of desert water, poetry meets science.” - Ann Walka, author of Walking the Unknown River
“I appreciate very much that this project is so hopeful. We don't need hollow, band-aid hope from our writers. But we do need real, grounded hope--the kind of stuff that gets us on our feet again and ready to work and fight to protect our arid lands.” - Michael Branch, author of Rants from the Hill
“The author speaks with authority. This will be a good book and it will find a wide and appreciative audience among environmentally aware readers. What a treat for the people of southeastern Arizona.” - Jake Lodatto
“Already the first lines of Hannah Hidley's writing breathe a life that feels kin to Ellen Meloy's work. This writer's love for desert lands is vibrant, and this project is ambitious, original, and urgent—I can’t wait to pick it up in book form.” - Kendra Atleework, author of Miracle Country