Sonya Larson

2020 Prose
Sonya Larson

Photo by Scott M. Lacey

Bio

Sonya Larson’s short fiction and essays have appeared in Best American Short Stories, American Short Fiction, American Literary Review, Poets & Writers, Writer’s Chronicle, Amazon Originals, Audible.com, West Branch, Salamander, Memorious, the Harvard Advocate, Pangyrus, Solstice Magazine, Del Sol Review, Red Mountain Review, the Hub, and more. She has received numerous awards and fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Vermont Studio Center, Ragdale, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the St. Botolph Club Foundation, and more. Larson is director of GrubStreet’s Muse and the Marketplace writing conference, and an organizer for the Boston Writers of Color Group. She received her MFA in fiction from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She lives in Somerville, Massachusetts, and is writing a novel about park rangers of color.

Most days, I find writing very hard. Any progress I’ve made has come from reminding myself that I can do hard things, and surrounding myself with books and people who show me, in their unique ways, how other people have also done hard things.

Usually I feel like I’m spending my nights building a little house for myself, dismantling and reworking the materials until they become a freestanding structure, where life inside finally makes sense, if only to me. That a reader might go inside and feel a similar resonance means everything to me.

For 14 years, I’ve been fortunate to work at GrubStreet, helping fellow writers develop their art, build community, and seize opportunities. Now I am elated to seize a big opportunity too. To the National Endowment for the Arts I owe my fiercest gratitude, both for supporting my work and for their tireless efforts to bring important art to us all.

I’ll use this fellowship to complete a novel about National Park Rangers of color. That this story about federal workers is now supported by a federal arts program makes me very happy. I am humbled to receive this honor, especially among so many writers I admire.