Alison C. Rollins

Alison C. Rollins, born and raised in St. Louis city, currently works as a Librarian for the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is a 2019 National Endowment for the Arts Literature fellow. Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Black Warrior Review, Crazyhorse, Indiana Review, and elsewhere. A Cave Canem and Callaloo fellow, she is also a 2016 recipient of the Poetry Foundation’s Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship. In 2018, she was the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award. Her debut poetry collection, Library of Small Catastrophes (2019) is with Copper Canyon Press.

The Value of Support

"As a black queer woman, the support of the Rona Jaffe has proved necessary and extremely impactful to my development as a writer. The network of award recipients is a strong and inclusive community that genuinely functions to be supportive and uplifting. The Writer’s Award has allowed me to travel internationally and to conduct research for my current creative projects. The financial support has greatly aided me in the completion of my first collection of poetry, Library of Small Catastrophes (Copper Canyon Press), and has helped me to take greater risks in developing my craft. Overall, receiving this Writers’ Award will allow me to devote more time to my writing and to take on more ambitious projects across genre. The financial support has allowed me to offset educational student loan costs, attend conferences, and promote my debut book."