Grad Student Discusses Writing about Abuse at ‘Room of Her Own’

Kelly Sundberg, a graduate student in English, has been named the 2015 A Room of Her Own Foundation’s Courage Fellow.

The fellowship was created to enable a survivor of domestic violence or sexual assault to attend the foundation’s annual retreat in Ghost Ranch, NM. While at the retreat, Sundberg will be creating and working alongside a diverse population of esteemed women writers. Sundberg will also be giving a brief presentation on writing about abuse.

Kelly Sundberg

Sundberg is currently a Ph.D. Candidate in Creative Nonfiction at Ohio University, where she is also the Managing Editor of Brevity Magazine: A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction. Her essays have appeared in Guernica, Quarterly West, The Los Angeles Review, Mid-American Review, Slice Magazine, PANK, and others. Her essay, “Like Mourner’s Bread” was listed as a Notable Essay in Best American Essays 2013, edited by Cheryl Strayed. An Idaho native, Sundberg remains interested in the American West, landscape, and the often uneasy relationship between people and place; however, her current project focuses on the effects of gender violence.

Founded in 2000, A Room of Her Own’s mission is to inspire, fund, and champion works of art and literature by women. AROHO has channeled more than 1,000,000 publicly gifted dollars into new awards, fellowships, and life-changing opportunities for women and has inspired thousands of books and works of art by women. While advancing Virginia Woolf’s belief that “women need money and a room of their own if they are to write,” AROHO also works to cultivate an environment of collective fellowship in which creative women bravely unearth, articulate, and contribute transformational literature and art.