Dr. Stephanie Carpenter, senior lecturer in creative writing and literature in the Department of Humanities was recently awarded the Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library in Delaware’s Maker-Creator Fellowship to support two novellas that she is currently writing.
The 2017-2018 fellowship is the first creative writing fellowship offered by the institution.
Carpenter’s project, “Many and Wide Separations: Two Novellas,” explores the lives of professional female artists in the mid-nineteenth century. The title novella centers on a daguerreotypist assistant; the companion piece is about a pair of itinerant portrait painters in the 1830s. The struggling painters will contemplate joining the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing—or Shakers, as they are more commonly known.
Shakers are a religious group founded in the 18th century in England but settled in colonial America. Their major practices include celibacy, communalism and pacifism.
In August 2017, Carpenter spent a month at Winterthur conducting research and writing. She will return in January 2018 to continue work on her novellas.
Apart from the current award, Carpenter won the 2017 Press 53 Award for short fiction. Her collection of short stories, “Missing Persons,” will be published on Oct. 10, 2017 by Press 53.
In 2016 Carpenter received the Tennessee Williams Scholarship in fiction, Sewanee Writers’ Conference; and in 2015 she received the American Antiquarian Society Visiting Fellowship for Historical Research by Creative and Performing Artists and Writers. She was a finalist in 2014 for the Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction and the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing Fellowship. She has been a three-time nominee for the prestigious Pushcart Prize.
Talking about the stories in her debut collection, Kevin Morgan Watson, publisher of Press 53, said, “These stories are diverse in voice, setting, conflict and style. Ms. Carpenter’s skills shine in this collection, as does her ability to step into the shoes of a wide range of people while peeling back the complex layers of their lives.”
Speaking to The Lode on Sunday about her fellowship, Carpenter said, “It was really a great opportunity for me. The Winterthur collection contains materials that are very useful to my project.”
Asked about her motivation for the current project, Carpenter said, “the mid-nineteenth century interests me because of its social and technological upheavals. I’m interested in imagining women’s experiences in that climate.”
Carpenter holds a Master of Fine Arts from Syracuse University and a Ph.D. in Creative Writing and American Literature from the University of Missouri. Her short stories appeared in Witness, Nimrod International Journal, Quiddity International Literary Journal, The Cossack Review, Big Fiction, The Crab Orchard Review, LITnIMAGE and Midwestern Gothic among others.
Carpenter will be the artist in residence at The Studios at Key West, Florida from June to July 2018. She recently was the artist in residence at the Dickinson House, Olsene, Belgium in June 2017 as a Henry James Grant recipient; and in Ragdale, Lake Forest, Illinois in January 2017.
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