Joni Tevis
Photo by David Bernardy
Bio
Joni Tevis is the author of two books of essays. The World Is On Fire: Scrap, Treasure, and Songs of Apocalypse (Milkweed Editions) won the Firecracker Award for Nonfiction from the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses and was named a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year. The Wet Collection: A Field Guide to Iridescence and Memory (Milkweed Editions) was a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award. Her work has appeared in Orion, the Southern Review, DIAGRAM, Poets & Writers, the Pushcart Prize anthology, and elsewhere. She serves as the Bennette E. Geer Associate Professor of English at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina, and is at work on a new book of nonfiction about music, destruction, and iconic American landscapes.
Friends, I have been applying for a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts for many years. Specifically, since 2007, and every two years after that, so 2007, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2015, 2017, and now 2019. Practically speaking, this award will allow me course-release time to work on my current book draft, but even more, it is a great encouragement to me. I’m so honored and humbled by this. I ask my students as I ask myself: “What would you write if you knew you could not fail?” I treasure this Yes after the six rounds of No, but the no’s were useful too, because they spurred me on. We must never give up.