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Contact: Jamie Walden
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Laman Library Launches Grant Program for Arkansas Authors; Grif Stockley Gets First Fellowship

NORTH LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (March 23, 2010) – The William F. Laman Public Library System announced Tuesday a grant program to provide up to $10,000 to a different Arkansas author each year.

Laman Library established the Laman Library Writers Fellowship in March 2010 to provide grants to Arkansas authors to assist them in the writing and publishing process.

"The Laman Library Writers Fellowship is symbol of our effort to enrich the community by taking our mission a step further," Laman Library Executive Director Jeff Baskin said. "We now not only provide public access to books and other information, we encourage the creation of literature by Arkansans, for Arkansans."

The 2010 fellowship has been awarded to Grif Stockley to assist him as he completes his book on the 1959 fire at the Negro Boys Industrial School in Wrightsville. Stockley will recount the tragedy of 21 black teenagers who burned to death in a small dormitory that was pad-locked from the outside.

"This story is certainly one of the most tragic events in Arkansas history and yet we know so little about it," Stockley said. "Unfortunately, much of our racial history is hidden and will never be retrieved, which makes this opportunity so precious." Stockley added that the fellowship will allow him to devote almost all of his time to completing the book.

Each year, an independent group of literary professionals will select the authors based on the creative excellence of their work.

The Laman Library Writers Fellowship will be awarded during the first quarter of each year to a previously published author. Applications will be accepted from June through September for the fellowship of the upcoming year. The recipient will be paid in monthly installments for the remainder of the calendar year.

The Laman Library Writers Fellowship is supported by nontax dollars used for community enrichment.

To qualify for the grant, an applicant must have been commissioned by a commercial American publisher to write a full-length work of fiction, poetry or non-fiction. If the applicant is without a contractual commitment, he must have had at least one work published commercially by an American publisher, excluding vanity presses.

Applications will be submitted through Laman Library's new Web site, www.lamanlibrary.org, which is scheduled to launch in late May. Recipients may not apply for another fellowship within three years of receiving an award.

A podcast of the event will be available Tuesday afternoon at www.youtube.com/lamanlibrary.

About Grif Stockley
Award-winning author Grif Stockley has published 10 books, including six novels that he categorizes as "lawyer mysteries," and is also widely known for his nonfiction work on race relations in Arkansas. Stockley has won the Porter Prize for fiction and is a member of the Arkansas Writers Hall of Fame.

http://www.grifstockley.net/

About Laman Library
The William F. Laman Public Library, founded in 1946, began an expansion and renovation in 2002, adding a second floor and more than doubling in size from approximately 25,000 square feet to about 60,000 square feet. In 2009, Laman built a 2,000 square-foot exhibition space to American Association of Museums standards. The William F. Laman Public Library is located at 2801 Orange Street in North Little Rock.

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