In April 2014, we will host poet Shara Lessley for a week-long residency as our 2014 Mary Wood Fellow. This is the first year we opened up the Mary Wood Fellowship as a nationwide competition and Shara was selected from a pool of more than 30 outstanding applicants. As part of her duties while in-residence, Shara will hold one-on-one meetings with a select group of female student-poets.  She will also participate in two public events, giving a craft talk and a reading from her poetry.

A former Stegner Fellow at Stanford, Shara Lessley is the author of Two-Headed Nightingale (New Issues 2012). Her awards include an Artist Fellowship from the State of North Carolina, the Diane Middlebrook Poetry Fellowship from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, Colgate University’s O’Connor Fellowship, The Gilman School’s Tickner Fellowship, and a “Discovery” / The Nation prize. Shara’s poems have appeared in Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, The Missouri Review, and New England Review, among others. A recent resident of the Middle East, Shara is completing a new collection titled The Explosive Expert’s Wife.

The Mary Wood Fellowship at The Rose O’Neill Literary House is awarded biennially to an emerging female writer—in poetry, fiction, or creative nonfiction—who has published one book. The Fellowship enables female creative writing students at Washington College to work with and learn from successful female writers like Laura van den Berg, Hannah Tinti, and Irina Reyn, who spend five days on campus. Eastern Shore author Mary Wood, whose support makes the fellowship possible, is a ’68 graduate of the College and a former member of its Board of Visitors and Governors.