LARAMIE WRITER WINS NEA FELLOWSHIP: May-Lee Chai of Laramie has been awarded a 2006 creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. May-Lee will receive a $20,000 stipend for her manuscript submission, which was an excerpt from a novel-in-progress. She moved to Laramie with her family in 1988 and has lived there on-and-off ever since. She taught writing at the University of Wyoming and participated in Laramie's literacy fair each spring. She taught last year at Amherst College in Massachusetts, and is taking this year off to finish a novel. May-Lee’s book include Glamorous Asians: Short Stories and Essays and the novel My Lucky Face. She and her father, UW professor Winberg Chai, wrote alternating chapters of the memoir, The Girl from Purple Mountain: Love, Honor, War, and One Family's Journey from China to America. A number of Rocky Mountain writers were 2006 NEA awardees, including Debra Earling from Polson, Mont., and Idaho's Lance Olsen, a recent visiting writer at UW. Writers from N.M., Ariz., and Utah also received fellowships. Go here for the complete list.

- posted by Michael Shay @ 9:04 AM