Help Krysten attend the Vermont Studio Center!

UPDATE: Thanks to your generosity, we're almost at our $3000 goal! Any extra funds will go to help Krysten with travel expenses. :)

"My mama said that if I became a poet or a teacher, I’d make nothing, but 

I’ve thrown words like rocks and hit something in a room when I aimed 

for a window. One student says when he writes, it feels 

like nothing can stop him, and his laughter unlocks a door. He invites me 

into his living."

(from "Nothing," by Krysten Hill-- read the full poem here )

Krysten Hill's one of the best and bravest poets I know. You think she's shy and soft-spoken when you meet her. Then she gets up on stage and reads a poem and you realize that she's unstoppable. Then you read the poem on the page and you realize that it's not just performance chops--it's the words, the order, the rhythm, the art, the truth, the courage to speak the truth. And if you've ever met her--if you've been lucky enough to become her friend--you know that she is generous to a fault with her time and her heart. There's nobody you want in your corner more. She will cut somebody for you.

She also, like so many of us, has a hard time asking for help.

Krysten's weathered a tumultuous year, full both of joy and terrible loss: she lost her mother, married the love of her life, and got published in POETRY magazine, all within the span of a few short months. Now she's been accepted to the Vermont Studio Center, and she needs our help to attend. The residency is a great honor, and the unbroken writing time will help her in ways that just can't be measured. But she needs $3000 to pay for it.

Let's be in her corner, this time.

Krysten Hill is the author of How Her Spirit Got Out (Aforementioned Productions, 2016), which received the 2017 Jean Pedrick Chapbook Prize. Her work has been featured in The Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day Series, POETRY, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Muzzle, PANK, Winter Tangerine Review, and elsewhere. The recipient of the 2016 St. Botolph Club Foundation Emerging Artist Award and 2020 Mass Cultural Council Poetry Fellowship.