JACKSON, Wyo. — The Wyoming Arts Council has announced the recipients of this year’s fellowships in visual arts, creative writing and performing arts, with many accolades awarded along the western edge of the state.
Tumbleweed Creative Arts Artistic Director Andrew Munz, awarded a creative writing fellowship, is the only Jacksonite on the list. Other awards went to Jennifer Wilkins (Afton), Kristin Hugo (Kemmerer), George Vlastos and Jono Majhanovich (Pinedale), along with others farther afield. See the full list of fellows here.
This is Munz’s second fellowship from the council; in 2021, he received a performing arts fellowship. He told Buckrail being honored for his fiction this year came as “a surprise, and a shock and a big injection of confidence.” He’s working on a novel dubbed “Equality State.”
“It feels really good to know that this new novel that I’ve been working on — that is about grief and LGBT life in Wyoming and this battle between conservatism and traditional values and queer joy — is worth a damn,” Munz said.
Munz said he wanted to put his stipend funds toward traveling around the state to meet and collaborate with other Wyoming-based artists.
“It’s important to take down the divide that says Jackson is different from Wyoming, since that’s often the perception,” he said. “[This fellowship] is inspiring to me and it makes me want to figure out ways to bridge those gaps. Wyoming should be known as a cultural hub for artistic production.”
