Rebecca Solnit Named Inaugural Barry Lopez Foundation Writing Fellow at Ucross

Ucross Foundation, the acclaimed artist residency program in northern Wyoming, announced that the award-winning writer Rebecca Solnit is the inaugural recipient of the Barry Lopez Foundation Writing Fellowship at Ucross.

“Barry Lopez taught me to write in how his books modeled wonder, exploration, the way that a book could, like a traveler, roam across vast spaces, candor, the relationship between the deepest inner life and the broadest expanses between the spiritual and the natural,” Solnit said. “I’m honored to have this fellowship in his name, and I’m excited to go be in the prairie (and coal country) of Northeast Wyoming.”

Awarded once a year, the Barry Lopez Foundation Writing Fellowship at Ucross will provide a mid-career American author or essayist with uninterrupted time to focus on a creative project that reflects the late nature writer Barry Lopez’s desire to inspire an ethical relationship with the planet and contribute to our understanding of the responsibilities we have to the natural world and to each other. 

“Ucross is thrilled to join forces with the Barry Lopez Foundation for Art & Environment to support writers who are helping us navigate these complex matters,” said Ucross President and Executive Director Caitlin Addlesperger. “We look forward to sharing time and space with the great Rebecca Solnit.” 

As the inaugural awardee, Solnit will receive a two-week residency at Ucross, which includes private studio space, living accommodations, meals by a professional chef and the experience of the majestic High Plains. The award also includes a $5,000 honorarium. 

“We are honored that Rebecca Solnit will launch the foundation’s writing fellowship at Ucross,” said Toby Jurovics, director of the Barry Lopez Foundation for Art & Environment. “What strikes me about her writing is its complexity and clarity — so much happens on every page, yet there is never a question about what she means or where she stands. Writing with an immediacy fitting our difficult times, her work is a beacon for those of us who have not given up hope for a more promising future and reflects Barry Lopez’s own expansive enthusiasm for the world.”

Solnit is the author of more than 25 books, including “Orwell’s Roses,” “Hope in the Dark,” “Men Explain Things to Me,” “A Field Guide to Getting Lost,” and, most recently, “The Beginning Comes After the End.” A regular contributor to The Guardian, she writes the newsletter “Meditations in An Emergency” and serves on the boards of Oil Change International and Third Act.

The Barry Lopez Foundation for Art & Environment organizes fine art exhibitions and creative fellowships in the visual arts, literature and music addressing climate change, biodiversity, habitat loss and the changing relationship with the planet. Collaborating with contemporary photographers, painters, graphic artists, video artists, composers and writers, the Barry Lopez Foundation believes that the arts can help navigate the decisions being made about the future, sustain connection to the natural world and inspire an ethical relationship with the land. To learn more about the Barry Lopez Foundation, visit barrylopezfoundation.org

Since Ucross’s first residencies were awarded in 1983, more than 3,000 artists have received the gift of time and space. Distinguished Fellows include Annie Proulx, Terry Tempest Williams, Elizabeth Gilbert, Ann Patchett, Bill Morrison, Theaster Gates, Anthony Hernandez, Tayari Jones and Suleika Jaouad. National Book Award winners Susan Choi, Sigrid Nunez and Sarah M. Broom have been residents, as have Academy Award and Tony winners Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, Emmy Award winner Billy Porter, Pulitzer Prize winners Colson Whitehead and Tessa Hulls and former three-term U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo.