How would you spend a summer with Image?

The Luci Shaw Fellowship

Every summer, Image puts up an undergraduate student in an apartment down the street from our Seattle office, provides that student with a crash course in the field of nonprofit literary publishing, and sends him or her on a trip to the Glen Workshop—in exchange for some hard work.

That’s the raw summary—the bare bones of the matter.

The longer, more interesting version of the story can only be told as it is uniquely fleshed out by each Shaw Fellow. Over the summers, past Fellows have experienced lunch with poet B.H. Fairchild, garden parties in Greg and Suzanne Wolfe’s backyard, emceeing the Glen Workshop’s Open Mic Night, carrying Eugene Peterson’s luggage, climbing Seattle’s Mount Rainier, and much more.

In 2006, our Shaw Fellow was Lucas Kwong, a Yale student hailing from Vancouver, BC: “While in Seattle, the left side of my brain also underwent some kind of synaptic explosion of creativity, for which I have to credit Image...in the midst of reading Image, sleeping eight hours a night, and enjoying the natural scenery of the Fremont neighborhood, I started to write songs, something I hadn’t done in years.” Lucas is still involved in the music scene, currently performing in New York City. His sharp, hilarious prose won us over, too; Lucas went on to write a series of Good Letters blog posts, which you can read here. 

Caitlin Cogan Doemner, Image’s Shaw Fellow for 2007, was interested in learning more about the business details of the publishing world. In one-on-one enrichment sessions with Image’s managing Mary Kenagy Mitchell, she was able to delve into our business planning and accounting. She also wrote for our e-newsletter, ImageUpdate, and researched design possibilities for Image’s website redesign. In her free time she kayaked Lake Washington. Caitlin went on to parlay her experiences at Image into an MBA, telling us that “my time as the Luci Shaw Fellow was one of the most enriching experiences of my life. It gave me insight and entrée into the world of art and literary publishing, and whetted my desire to continue working in the field.”

For some Shaw Fellows, one summer is too short. Each Fellow gets to take a workshop at the Glen, and Madeleine Fentress, summer of 2008, is greatly interested in both visual art and poetry. Back then she studied Life Drawing under renowned illustrator Barry Moser. Madeleine is now an assistant managing editor at Hudson Review, and she’s taking a train from New York City to help us out with Glen East. Perhaps she’ll choose Gregory Orr’s poetry class this time around? And Joanna Vance, our 2009 Fellow, is also returning to Image via the Seattle Pacific MFA program, where she will study poetry under Jeanine Hathaway and Jeanne Murray Walker.

This past summer brought Emily Meyer, a literature student at New College, our youngest Shaw Fellow ever. Emily actually applied for the Fellowship in 2009 as a senior in high school, and we turned her down (the Shaw is for undergrads only), though we remembered her determination and spunk and invited her to come the following year. Emily spent the summer exploring the Seattle music scene, working on poetry for B.H. Fairchild’s workshop, and feeding the Image staff her stellar enchiladas. She described her experience at the Glen as "both a lunge into the unknown and an unexpected homecoming. I found myself in a place I had never been with people I had never met and yet was closely united with them through a common love for the intersection of art and faith." Emily, too, will be returning to the Glen Workshop this summer.

If you are a bright, motivated, and meticulous undergraduate student who shares Image’s vision for art in the life of faith, we’d like to invite you to apply for the Luci Shaw Fellowship, and discover your own story for the summer of 2011. Click here for more details and an application.