Megan Grumbling awarded Hawthornden Castle Fellowship

Megan Grumbling, developmental writing specialist in the Student Academic Success Center, has been named a 2015 Hawthornden Fellow and was awarded a Hawthornden Castle Fellowship at Hawthornden Castle, The International Retreat for Writers, in Scotland. The fellowship offers its fellows free room and board in the castle for one month so that that they may focus on the development of their work as writers.

Hawthornden Castle is a 15th century castle about 40 minutes from Edinburgh. The Fellowship was established 1982 to provide a peaceful setting where published writers can work without disturbance. The Retreat houses five Hawthornden Fellows at a time.

Writers from any part of the world may apply for the fellowships; previous winners include Les Murray, Alasdair Gray, Helen Vendler, Olive Senior, and Hilary Spurling. The fellowships are funded by Drue Heinz, owner of the castle and publisher of the Paris Review.

Grumbling will spend her fellowship month working on her manuscript Persephone in the Late Anthropocene, a volume of poetry that re-imagines the goddess of spring (who traditionally spends three months of the year underground) in the age of climate change, genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and industrialized agriculture.