Awards
Bush Foundation
St. Paul, MN. 2005.
Bush Artist Fellowships provide artists with significant financial support that enables them to further their work and their contribution to their communities. Fellows may decide to take time for solitary work or reflection, engage in collaborative and community projects, embark on travel or research, or pursue any other activity that contributes to their lives as artists.
Artists may use the fellowship in many ways—to explore new directions, continue work already in progress, or accomplish work not financially feasible otherwise. Annually, the Bush Artist Fellows program supports up to 15 artists at any stage of their life’s work from early to mature. Grants are made in eight categories that rotate on a two-year cycle. In 2005, fellows received $44,000 each for fellowships that may last from 12 to 24 months.
Carnegie Mellon University
H&SS Alumni Study/Travel Award. 1997 to 1998. Pittsburgh, PA..
An award of $10,000. Designed year-long independent research experience in Ghana. Traveled through West Africa conducting interviews, library, and anecdotal research for collection of fiction. Story topics included women’s experiences in witch camps, Russian-Ghanaian marriages, life in a Liberian refugee camp, and African-Americans’ struggle to relocate in Ghana.
Carnegie Mellon University Department of Modern Languages
Travel Award. 1996. Pittsburgh, PA.
Studied at the School for International Training Culture and Development program in Bolivia. Attended Bolivian politics, economics, culture, and language classes. Completed a project in anthropological fiction.
Hurston/Wright Foundation
Washington, D.C. 2002.
Hurston/Wright Award for College Writers — First Prize
The Hurston/Richard Wright Award™ for College Writers has been established by novelist Marita Golden to honor excellence in fiction writing by students of African descent enrolled full time as an undergraduate or graduate student in any college or university in the United States.
There is one first place award of $1,000, and two finalist awards of $500 for the writers of the best previously unpublished short story or novel excerpt.
Indiana University
Chancellor’s Fellowship. 1999 to 2002. Bloomington, IN.
A University-wide award given to a student with exceptional academic promise. It is a five-year financial package, consisting of a one-year fellowship and four years of a departmental graduate assistantship.
NAACP ACT-SO (Afro-Academic, Cultural, Technological and Scientific Olympics)
Third Place, National Competition, Original Essay. “Man or Beast? A Portrait of the African American in Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” 1992. Nashville, TN.
ACT-SO conducts annual academic competitions for students in grades nine through 12 in NAACP branches throughout the country. The current procedure is for participating braches of the NAACP to hold local competitions in various categories. The top local winners then compete with the winner from other cities at the national ACT-SO finals during the NAACP convention.
National Society of Arts and Letters
Literature Award. 2000. Bloomington, IN.
First place award in the annual literature competition for the short story, “Her Black Man.”
