Lillian E. Smith Center Residency Awards
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ince its inception, the LES Center has served as a space for artists, writers, scientists, students, and more to continue the legacy of Lillian Smith through their work. To facilitate them, the LES Center offers four residency awards every year: • • • •
Writer-in-Service Award McClure-Scalin Visual Artist Award Gabriele Stauf Award Emily Pierce Graduate Award
Lillian E. Smith
Writer-In-Service Award
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ustin Rudder is the 2021 recipient of the Lillian E. Smith Writer-in-Service Award. He is a Digital Asset Archivist at the Alabama Department of Archives and History, as well as the founder and director of the Digital Grassroots heritage project. Rudder’s project, Black Towns in Alabama, works to counter the ways that “many white Southern communities refuse public acknowledgment of their local Black history.”
All awards provide individuals with a twoweek stay at the center so that they can dedicate time and energy to their projects. A small honorarium is also provided with two of the awards—the Writer-in-Service Award and the Emily Pierce Graduate Award. The Writer-inService Award also provides a travel allowance. Our current fundraising priority is to shore up each of these funds so that we can provide an honorarium and travel allowance with each award. Additionally, we would like to identify donors interested in endowing each of the four awards so they can be offered in perpetuity. If you are interested in contributing to one or more of the residency award funds or, if you would like to discuss funding a permanent endowment, please contact Dr. Matthew Teutsch at the LES Center.
On the project, Rudder says, “Scholars have brought visibility to the stories of slavery and civil rights movements on the national, state, and regional levels over the last few decades. However, the joys and sorrows of daily African American life as well as how Black citizens identify the world around them are regularly overlooked. Some towns have taken steps to publicize the history of Black neighborhoods through social media as well as local library and museum websites. However, many towns respond that there are no Black communities or authorities on Black history in the area, and reason that their towns were integrated so any individual Black communities would be difficult to map.” This award is sponsored annually by a generous gift by Sue Ellen Lovejoy, a member of the LES Center Advisory Board. This award provides an opportunity for those writers who, like Lillian E. Smith, recognize “the power of the arts to transform the lives of all human beings.” Recipients receive an honorarium, travel allowance, and a two-week residency at the Center.
A View From the Mountain |
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