Emerging Artist Award: Literature

“It’s always a boost of encouragement when people who love poetry and the arts, recognize you and your work. Having been awarded an emerging artist grant from the Saint Botolph Club Foundation, I was able to forgo seeking time-consuming summer work, I was able to cover essential bills while traveling to and spending invaluable time in Mississippi where most of the poems in my manuscript-in-progress were written and conceptualized. The current manuscript was at a pivotal point last summer. It needed the attention equivalent of a summer to pen a small number of new works, make individual revisions and survey the entire text for cohesiveness. The Saint Botolph Club Foundation Emerging Artist Grant was timely and extremely instrumental in the progress of my writing. It carved out for me, the time necessary to dedicate toward the careful shaping of what will become my first collection of poems.” – A. H. Jerriod Avant