UWs McConigley Receives National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship

An assistant professor in the University of Wyoming Honors College has been selected by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to receive a 2022 Creative Writing Fellowship of $25,000.

Nina McConigley is one of 35 writers receiving the award, selected through an anonymous process and judged on the basis of artistic excellence of the work samples they provided. These fellowships are highly competitive, with more than 2,000 eligible applications received in 2022, with fewer than 3 percent of applicants awarded fellowships.

“The NEA is a vital organization that has supported many of the writers whose work has sustained me over the years. My deepest gratitude goes to the judging panel, the NEA administrators and to all those who have supported and encouraged me over the years,” McConigley says. “I am thankful for this recognition and to be in the company of each of this year’s award recipients. My teaching and scholarship at UW are an important part of my life, as is my creative work. This fellowship will allow me to work on my writing and research, and I am so grateful for this opportunity.”

This year’s NEA fellowships are in prose and enable the recipients to set aside time for writing, research, travel and general career development.

“We are excited to support the 2022 NEA Creative Writing Fellows in their careers, affording them the time and means and encouragement to focus on their writing,” says NEA Director of Literary Arts Amy Stolls. “We look forward to reading their works in years to come and appreciate their dedication to enriching our culture through their words.”

Born in Singapore to Irish and Indian parents, McConigley grew up in Casper. She holds a master’s degree in English from UW, a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from the University of Houston, and a bachelor’s degree in literature from St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn. She has taught creative writing at UW for more than a decade.

In 2019-2020, McConigley was the Walter Jackson Bate Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. Her short-story collection, “Cowboys and East Indians,” was the winner of the 2014 PEN Open Book Award and a High Plains Book Award. Her work has appeared in The New York Times; Orion; O the Oprah Magazine; Parents; Virginia Quarterly Review; American Short Fiction; and The Asian American Literary Review, among others.

Since 1967, the Arts Endowment has awarded more than 3,600 Creative Writing Fellowships totaling over $57 million. Many American recipients of the National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award and Pulitzer Prize in Poetry and Fiction were recipients of NEA fellowships early in their careers.