2024 Writers Cohort Announced
The National Willa Cather Center is pleased to announce members of the second cohort of writers of the Willa Cather Writers Residency in Red Cloud, Nebraska. The program will be held October 13-27, 2024. The Willa Cather Residency aims to inspire new work by emergent writers. For more about the Willa Cather Residency, click HERE.
Hillary Behrman
Hillary Behrman’s award winning short stories have been described as deeply humane and unsettling and have been published in journals and anthologies. Her work in the urban and rural Pacific Northwest as a children’s civil rights lawyer and public defender lends urgency to her fiction. Her life and writing are rooted in a strong sense of place, community and connection to wild and natural spaces.
K.M. Chenault
K.M. Chenault (a.k.a, Kathleen or Kathy) explores the themes of alienation, oppression and social conflict, drawing from her work as a longtime foreign correspondent in Asia and Africa. She grew up on a Nebraska farm and manages family-owned cropland from her home in the Washington, D.C. metro area, continuing a legacy that started with homesteaders in the 1800s. Her most recent work, the full-length play Exit Wounds focuses on the enduring suffering from ethnic hatred and racial violence.
Margot Kahn
Margot Kahn is a biographer, poet, and editor whose work explores gender, identity, ambition, and desire. She is the author of the biography Horses That Buck, winner of the High Plains Book Award, and co-editor of two essay anthologies. Her debut book of poems, The Unreliable Tree (Northwestern University), is forthcoming in 2025. Originally from Ohio, she lives in the Pacific Northwest with her family.
Donna O'Shaughnessy
Donna O'Shaughnessy is a retired Hospice RN and was greatly influenced by the strength and honesty of her past patients and their families. Much of her work revolves around death, dying and the endless hope and faith that sustains humanity. She resides on a nearly sustainable homestead in Central Illinois.
S.M. Sukardi
S.M. Sukardi is a writer, essayist, and occasional critic. Their work explores abjection, domesticity, and Asian American girlhood. They’ve received fellowships from Kundiman, the National Book Critics Circle, and Periplus.