SNHU MFA Faculty Member Named Director of AROHO Retreat

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SNHU MFA FACULTY MEMBER NAMED DIRECTOR OF AROHO RETREAT

Manchester, N.H. (January 13, 2009) – Kim Ponders, a faculty member in the SNHU MFA program, has been named director of the 2009 A Room of Her Own (AROHO) Foundation retreat. AROHO is a writing community designed by women for women, offering professional guidance, a community of supportive women writers, and grant money to women with burning stories to tell. Established in 2001 by two women who sought to bridge the often fatal gap between a woman’s economic reality and her capacity for artistic creation, AROHO offers women two wonderful opportunities.

First, there’s the Gift of Freedom Award, a bi-annual $50,000 grant to a woman of merit writing under trying economic circumstances. It is the largest grant of its kind in the United States. Its 2005 Gift of Freedom award went to Meredith Hall, who has since published the New York Times bestselling memoir, Without A Map.

Second, there’s a biannual writers’ retreat for 65 women who come together at Georgia O’Keefe’s Ghost Ranch in Abiuiu, NM, for a whirlwind week of writing classes, workshops, panels, and readings. Next summer, they’ll offer a special reading and seminar by Pulitzer Prize winner and former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove. Their other world-class faculty includes Pamela Painter, Dana Levin, Laura Fraser, Meredith Hall, and Ellen McLaughlin. In addition, the 2009 Gift of Freedom award winner will be announced during the retreat.

“It’s hard to describe the atmosphere of the retreat,” Ponders said. “The setting is gorgeous, and the women come from all over the country with incredibly diverse and intriguing backgrounds. We get carpenters, pilots, lawyers, biographers, playwrights, anything you can imagine, all of them with an intense desire to write.”

While the foundation offers two very tangible opportunities, it also believes in building and sustaining a community of women writers who can support and encourage each other, and is in the process of developing an online community forum at http://www.aroomofherownfoundation.org/ and www.myspace.com/roomofherown.

“I’m amazed at how many women returning from the retreats want to get involved in the foundation,” said Ponders. “We’re getting new ideas every week.”

Ponders, who joined the faculty of SNHU’s MFA program in Writing in 2007, is the author of two novels. Her first novel, “The Art of Uncontrolled Flight” (HarperCollins, 2005), a BookSense pick, is being adapted into a screenplay. Her second novel, “The Last Blue Mile” (HarperCollins, 2007), has been hailed by the Washington Post, Playgirl, Entertainment Weekly, and Alma Magazine, among others.

For more information on the award or retreat, please visit http://www.aroomofherownfoundation.org/.

About Southern New Hampshire University

The university has approximately 1,900 traditional, full-time undergraduate day students and a total enrollment in all divisions of about 9,425. Programs are offered on campus, online and on location at our centers in New Hampshire and Maine. The university offers programs in business, community economic development, culinary arts, teacher education, hospitality management and liberal arts.