Jackie Bartley, adjunct assistant professor of English at Hope College, has been awarded fellowships for summer residencies by two artist communities.
Each residency will run for two weeks, providing
her with time to continue work on the manuscript for a book
of poetry. She will spend time at the Ragdale Foundation in
Lake Forest, Ill., in June, and at the Mary Anderson Center
for the Arts in Mount Saint Francis, Ind., in July.
Each community selects its participants
competitively. Both programs seek to give writers, visual
artists and musicians a peaceful place and uninterrupted
time to create. Bartley hopes to complete her book this
summer.
The Ragdale Foundation was established in 1976,
and is located on the grounds of architect Howard Van Doren
Shaw's Arts and Craft style home. The community can
accommodate up to 12 residents at a time.
The Mary Anderson Center for the Arts was
organized in 1989, and is located on a 400-acre farm that
was given to the friars of the Province of Our Lady of
Consolation by Louisville, Ky., actress Mary Anderson in
1896. The friars helped establish the center, which hosts
up to six residents at a time in the 11-room Loftus House.
Bartley is the author of two published chapbooks
of poetry: "The Terrible Boundaries of the Body," published
by White Eagle Coffee Store Press in 1997, and "When Prayer
Is Far from Our Lips," published by the Franciscan
University Press in 1994.
"The Terrible Boundaries of the Body" was
published as the winner of White Eagle Coffee Store Press's
Fall 1996 Poetry Chapbook Contest. She completed "When
Prayer is Far from Our Lips" with support from a one-year
Creative Artists Grant she received in 1992 from the Arts
Foundation of Michigan in partnership with the Michigan
Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs.
Her poems have appeared in a number of journals,
including "Birmingham Poetry Review," "Roanoke Review,"
"West Branch" and "Yarrow."
Bartley has been a member of the Hope faculty
since 1989. She did her undergraduate work at Clarion
University in Pennsylvania, where she received a B.S. degree
in biology and a B.S. in medical technology, and
subsequently worked for 16 years as a medical technologist.
She began her work in poetry with Jack Ridl of the Hope
English faculty, and in 1988 earned a master of fine arts
degree in creative writing from Western Michigan University.