Gurfein Fellowship Gives the Gift of Mentoring
"Always when I’m driving, and out of nowhere, the words will appear. They tug insistently, demanding to become a phrase, the phrase pleading to become a story. With a legal pad on the passenger seat and pens bleeding ink into the cup holder, I honor the words whenever I reach a stop sign, red light, or the weary trucker’s rest stop. I speak the words out loud, testing sound and texture, exploring their light and digging at their dark side, questioning why they choose me in this moment… A single mother juggling a full-time job, while fighting to put two children through college, it’s all I can do to make the two ends meet without this obsession to author.”
These are the words of Stamford resident Angie Hunt, a student in Sarah Lawrence College’s noncredit Writing Institute for adults. With the help of her mentor, a Sarah Lawrence College faculty member, Angie’s memoir is well on its way to publication.
Angie is one of the first two recipients of a fellowship available to Writing Institute students that provides funding for the kind of personal, one-on-one work with their teachers that is the hallmark of the B.A. and master’s programs at Sarah Lawrence.
Funded by the Gurfein Family Foundation, the fellowships make it possible for two Writing Institute students each year to develop their work through conferences with writing teachers. A committee composed of renowned writers, headed by Mark Medoff, a Tony Award winner and Oscar nominated playwright, selects the students.
“This unique fellowship has been given in recognition of the talent displayed by students who, not for credit or to earn degrees but simply for the love of it, are pursuing their craft,” said Mayra Bloom, former director of the Center for Continuing Education at the College.
Kathy Curto of Cold Spring is the other inaugural recipient. Since receiving the fellowship, she has published a number of magazine articles. “With sincere, professional guidance and wisdom from my Sarah Lawrence mentor, I feel as though I have been given the kind of gift any writer would die for,” wrote Kathy. “I am currently working on a collection of essays—memoir pieces about growing up on the Jersey Shore in my big, blue-collar Italian-American family.”
This article was reprinted from the Fall 2006 issue of InTouch, a newsletter for friends and neighbors of Sarah Lawrence College. If you would like to receive this free newsletter, which contains news and a calendar of upcoming events, please subscribe online.
