Kelli Jo Ford, MFA ’07, has been named a 2022 Creative Writing Fellow with the National Endowment for the Arts. The fellowships, which each include an award of $25,000, are selected "through an anonymous review process in which the sole criterion is artistic excellence."
Ford is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. Her debut novel-in-stories Crooked Hallelujah was longlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel, the Story Prize, the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize. She is the recipient of the Paris Review’s Plimpton Prize, the Everett Southwest Literary Award, a Native Arts & Cultures Foundation National Artist Fellowship, an Elizabeth George Foundation Grant, and a Dobie Paisano Fellowship. She teaches writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts and lives in Virginia with her husband, daughter, and hound dog.
You can read Ford's personal statement at the NEA website.
Among this year's other recipients are three recent visiting writers to Mason: Tope Folarin, Marjan Kamali, and Laura van den Berg.
January 11, 2022
