Individual Artist Project Grant (INDIVIDUALS ONLY)

Because I live in rural northern Minnesota (off that pot-holed stretch of Highway 169 running from Bovey to Soudan, from memory to overburden) I believe it is significant that arts funding and artists sustain a vibrant creative community, specifically in economically depressed communities such as as those on the Iron Range. Often we feel we live in a different world, isolated, unique to ourselves, our community--our own desires and dreams. As the 90-year-old poet David Ferry questions: "Is it because there is a silence that we / are all of us forbidden to cross, not only the silence that divides the dead from the living, / but antecedent to that, it is the silence / there is between the living and the living." My work intends to leap into that void and to flush the silence, to give it gravity, shape, voice--to remind us that the silence between each of us, if we only have the courage to embrace it, is the fabric that brings us all together on this go-round planet. My primary goal is to advance my professional career by completing a short story collection to submit to agents and publishers. This project has three measurable outcomes, two during the grant year and one at a later date. During the grant time frame: 1) completing a short story collection, 2) submitting that collection to agents and publishers. After the grant time frame: the publication of that collection. My first novel, like this one, was built out of brief, intense moments, dawn hours, while my family slept. Despite limited resources, I was able to complete the novel and although it hasn't found a home yet, it paved the for me to move on to another project. I was fortunate to receive funding for that project, including a research trip along the U.S./Mexico border funded by the Jerome Foundation. This led to a 80-page report on the crisis of immigration. Excerpts from the report were used by the Jerome Foundation to validate their grant-making and secure their own funding. However, the story I began with that report and told in the novel, has yet to reach wider audiences. I am driven by the experience of my work as a journalist and young father in Central America; I am driven by the individuals who shared their stories with me, their homes, to share my artistic vision with a wider audience. This collection has the potential for me to achieve this dream.The first outcome will be measured by having a complete manuscript in hand by the end of the work-plan time frame to submit to agents and publishers. The actual number of those submissions during the grant year will be an accurate measure of the second outcome goal. Finally, the third outcome will be measured by the publication of the manuscript, which has an undefined time frame.