Sundress Academy for the Arts Announces 2022 Summer Poetry Writing Retreat Scholarship Winners

The Sundress Academy for the Arts is thrilled to announce its Summer Poetry Writing Retreat Scholarship Winners. The three-day, two-night camping retreat will be held at SAFTA’s own Firefly Farms in Knoxville, Tennessee. All SAFTA retreats focus on generative poetry writing.

The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to offer two fellowships for this year’s Summer Poetry Writing Retreat. This year’s scholarship winners are Lissa Batista and Topaz Winters.

Lissa Batista is a Brazilian-born poet and middle school teacher from Miami, Florida, where she lives with her son and her sphynx cat; who loves sweaters. She is pursuing her MFA at Florida International University. Her works can be found or forthcoming with Bellingham Review, Tofu Ink, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and others.

Topaz Winters is the Singaporean-American author of three full-length poetry collections (most recently So, Stranger, Button Poetry, May 2022). She is the founder & editor-in-chief of the internationally-acclaimed publishing house & literary journal Half Mystic. Her peer-reviewed scholarly work is published in the Journal of Homosexuality. Her creative work is published in Diode, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, DIALOGIST, Birdfeast, & Cosmonauts Avenue, & has been featured by The Straits Times, American Banker, the National University of Singapore, the Boston Poetry Slam, the Center for Fiction, & the Academy of American Poets. Topaz is 22 years old & in her third year at Princeton University. You can find more of her work at topazwinters.com.

Finalists for this year’s fellowships include Schuyler Brooks, Shirley Luke, Jazmin Witherspoon, Sara Adams, Anna-Quinn French, and Carly Goetz. Thank you to Sarah Clark and Alex DiFrancesco for serving as this year’s judges.

There are still a few spaces remaining for this year’s Poetry Writing Retreat. The event will be open to writers of all backgrounds and provide an opportunity to work with many talented, published poets from around the country, including workshop leaders, jason b. crawford and Stacey Balkun. Reserve your place at: https://squareup.com/store/sundress-publications/item/poetry-retreat