Kelli Jo Ford
SAR Indigenous Writer in Residence Fellowship 2016
The School for Advanced Research is pleased to announce that Kelli Jo Ford is the 2016 Indigenous Writer in Residence Fellow. This fellowship is generously supported by Lannan Foundation.
Ms. Ford is Cherokee and grew up in the land around the Red River that separates Oklahoma from Texas and is known among her people as “Jumping Off Point.” Kelli earned her M.F.A in Creative Writing in 2007 from George Mason University. She currently lives and works in Richmond, VA, and is the recipient of the 2016 Elizabeth George Foundation Artistic Grant. While at SAR, she will be working on polishing up her book, Crooked Hallelujah. In her own words about her project she writes:
I want the stories to reflect more than the lives of one fictional family. I hope people—who, like I did, find themselves explorers in strange classrooms—in some way recognize their lives in my work and know that they can write their stories too, even when they may feel like outsiders in those stories. I want all kinds of people to know these women from Eastern Oklahoma, how we make our way from our homes and struggle and prosper, fight and love, lose and find ourselves. Our world is not homogenous, and I hope to play some small role in making sure that our fiction isn’t either.
Ms. Ford was in residence at SAR from June 20 the August 5, 2016.
Sponsored by Lannan Foundation.
SAR Writers in Residence,
since 2011
Thomas Parrie
Gordon Lee Johnson
Kelli Jo Ford
Max Early
Joan Naviyuk Kane
Casandra Lopez
Janice Gould
Santee Frazier