(Graphic | Courtesy of High Desert Museum)
Writers have less than one month to submit their work for the High Desert Museum’s 2022 Waterston Desert Writing Prize. Submissions will be accepted through Sunday, May 1 at 11:59pm.
The Prize honors literary nonfiction that illustrates artistic excellence, sensitivity to place and desert literacy with the desert as both subject and setting. The Prize supports literary nonfiction writers who are completing a book-length manuscript focused on any desert region.
The Prize award grew to $3,000 this year. The winner also receives a residency at PLAYA at Summer Lake, an arts and sciences residency campus located on Summer Lake, Oregon, and will be featured in a reception and awards ceremony at the Museum in Bend, Oregon in September 2022.
Inspired by author and poet Ellen Waterston’s love of the High Desert, a region that has been her muse for more than 30 years, the Prize recognizes the vital role deserts play worldwide in the ecosystem and human narrative. In 2020, the High Desert Museum — which has long hosted events for the Prize — adopted the program.
“With less than one month left in the submission window, we’re anticipating a wealth of thought-provoking work,” said Museum Executive Director Dana Whitelaw, Ph.D. “The Waterston Desert Writing Prize submissions take us to deserts around the globe.”
The winner of the 2021 Waterston Desert Writing Prize was Ceal Klingler (lookwhereyoulive.net) for How We Live With Each Other. Klingler’s submission addressed how animals, plants and other organisms have created livable places with each other at the hard edges of heat, cold, dehydration, floods and fires at the westernmost overlap of the Mojave and Great Basin deserts.
The 2021 finalists were Charles Hood (workman.com/authors/charles-hood) for Deserts After Dark and Joe Wilkins for Desert Reckoning (joewilkins.org).
To learn more about the Waterston Desert Writing Prize and how to submit an entry, visit highdesertmuseum.org/waterston-prize.
The High Desert Museum is excited to also announce the return of the Waterston Student Essay Competition, open to young writers from Crook, Deschutes, Harney, Jefferson and Lake counties. It’s open to students in grades nine through 12, in public or private school, or home-schooled. Students may submit essays of 750 to 1,000 words of nonfiction prose to waterston@highdesertmuseum.org through May 1, 2022. The submissions will be judged on originality, clarity of expression, accuracy, and their contribution to the understanding and appreciation of desert regions.
To learn more about the Waterston Student Essay Competition and how to submit an entry, visit highdesertmuseum.org/waterston-student-prize.