The Straw Dog Writers Guild Emerging Writer Fellowship Working Committee is responsible for running the fellowship program and ensuring that fellows derive maximum benefit during their fellowship year.
Ellen Meeropol
Ellen Meeropol is the author of the novels The Lost Women of Azalea Court (forthcoming), Her Sister’s Tattoo, Kinship of Clover, On Hurricane Island, and House Arrest and the play Gridlock. Recent essay and short story publications include Ms. Magazine, Lilith, Guernica, Lit Hub, Solstice, and Mom Egg Review. Her work has been honored by the Sarton Women’s Prize, Women’s National Book Association, and the Massachusetts Center for the Book.
Liz Bedell
Liz Bedell’s recently completed novel, The Space Between, was shortlisted in the 2020 William Faulkner William Wisdom Competition, Novel category. She was the co-editor of Embody, a weekly feature column at The Maine Review. She holds an MFA Fiction and Translation from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She writes and teaches in the Pioneer Valley of western Massachusetts.
Maxine Schmidt
Macci Schmidt is a retired geologist and librarian. She is working at the moment on a memoir of her geology field work in the Four Corners region.
Fungai Tichawangana
Fungai Tichawangana is the founder and managing editor of Valley of Writers, a platform which shares resources, opportunities, and ideas with writers. In 2015, he was awarded a Nieman Journalism Fellowship and a Berkman-Klein Fellowship for Journalism Innovation at Harvard based on work he had done documenting arts and culture in Zimbabwe. He is passionate about the intersection of technology and the arts and is constantly working on ways to light one up with the other. He is based in Amherst MA.