CWU Alum Receives NEA Fellowship

March 3, 2005

Contact: Diane Schuirman-Hagedorn (253-566-5192/fax 253-566-5004/e-mail: dschuirm@tcc.ctc.edu)

TACOMA, Wash. - Allen Braden, English instructor at Tacoma Community College, has received a $20,000 fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. The award recognizes Braden's excellence in poetry writing. He was one of more than 1,600 applicants nationwide and ranked in the top three percent.

Braden began writing fiction at the age of 10 and discovered poetry while attending Central Washington University, where he received his bachelor's degree in English in 1991.

"It was a breath of fresh air," he said. He has focused on writing poetry for about 10 years.

The fellowship will enable Braden to continue researching and writing, to develop new course curriculum and to take summers off from teaching. Braden is working toward tenure, so does not plan to take leave from the college.

He is, however, working to prepare his first book, a collection of his work, for publication. Already he has plans for a second book, a series about Lewis and Clark.

"My work is an emotional release for me, and I hope for the same visceral response from an attentive reader," Braden said.

His favorite of his pieces is "the next one - that creative process is what keeps me going. I'm going to keep writing as long as it gives me pleasure."

Raised on a farm in White Swan, Wash., inside the Yakama Indian Reservation, Braden uses nature and growing up on the farm as the prevailing themes in his work. But they are not his inspiration.

"I don't believe in inspiration," he said. "Anyone who works at it can become an excellent writer."

More than 70 of Braden's poems have appeared in publications including Orion, Poetry Daily, Shenandoah, Poetry Northwest and The New Republic.

He has also received an Artist Trust Grant, the Grolier Poetry Prize, and creative residencies at Centrum and Millay Colony for the Arts. In addition, he has won the Witness Emerging Writers' Contest and had a poem selected to be recorded for the Symphony Shorts program at New York's Symphony Space.

Braden has been at TCC for four years and has been instrumental in establishing the Gallery Reading Series. The series is a set of performances in conjunction with the multimedia exhibits at The Gallery at TCC. In a venue free and open to the public, featured local writers of poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction share their creations. The Gallery Reading Series was created to make students and the community aware of TCC's art gallery and expose students to local writers, Braden said.

To apply for the NEA fellowship, Braden submitted 15 pages of work published within the last five years and a 10-page writing sample. A committee of eight nationally recognized poets and two lay people assessed his work.

Literature fellowships represent the NEA's most direct investment in American creativity, according to its website. The program's goal is to encourage the production of new work and allow writers the time and means to write or translate. The NEA has awarded more than $39 million to more than 2,450 writers, and sponsored work resulting in more than 2,300 books.