Non-profit publisher Dzanc awards this annual $5,000 prize based on (1) the quality of a writer’s work and (2) a proposal to undertake a specific community service project. This year’s winner, Kodi Scheer, will lead three 10-week writing workshops for patients, caregivers, and staff at the Comprehensive Cancer Center at U-Mich’s hospital. A recent graduate of the Michigan MFA program, Scheer was the recipient of the 2008 Creative Writing Prize for outstanding MFA thesis, and her stories have appeared in Bellevue Literary Review and Quarterly West. She is writing a story collection with the working title Gross Anatomy.
To read more about Kodi, her project, and the prize itself, check out Dzanc’s blog. And hear last year’s winner, Laura van den Berg, discuss what winning the Dzanc Prize has meant to her; van den Berg’s collection What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us will be published by Dzanc in late 2009.
