The generosity of the Board of the Ucross Foundation, and the Foundation’s President, Sharon Dynak, has made possible an ongoing relationship with the University of Wyoming Creative Writing MFA program, through which one graduating UW MFA student each year is awarded a one-month residency at Ucross.
This year’s recipient is Alan Barstow. In his time at Ucross, Barstow will continue to develop the nonfiction project that generated his MFA thesis, “Amen: Denying and Defying HIV/AIDS in a Namibian Village.”
Alan spent two years as a peace corp worker in Namibia, and returned to Namibia over spring break as part of a team of law students to study the problem of HIV/AIDS in the prisons. Alan has also been the graduate assistant to Terry Tempest Williams and coordinates her "weather reports" project for the graduate student committee.
This is the second year of the partnership; last year, fiction writer Sarah Norek was awarded a residency.
Congrats, Alan. And happy trails.
