SC Arts Commision Grants Awards

Julia E. Elliott

A resident of Cayce, S.C., Elliott is a professor in the women's studies department at the University of South Carolina. She has written numerous award-winning short stories and short fiction that have been published in notable literary magazines such as Conjunctions and The Georgia Review. Elliott earned her doctorate in English at the University of Georgia. Her doctoral dissertation went on to become one of three winners of the Great American Novel Award at the Virginia Festival of the Book in 2003. Elliott's short story The Whipping was recently reprinted in the inaugural edition of Best American Fantasy 2007, Plume Books. Nationally acclaimed Tin House magazine printed her story, The Wilds, last fall. Elliott is in the process of polishing a short story collection for book publication while also working on a novel set in South Carolina.

Mindy Friddle

Mindy Friddle lives in Greenville where she directs the Writing Room, a nonprofit program for writers. A book reviewer and columnist, she holds a master's degree in fine arts from Warren Wilson College in Ashville, N.C. She recently completed her second novel, Secret Keepers, which will be published next summer by St. Martin's Press. Her first novel, The Garden Angel was selected for Barnes and Noble's Discover Great New Writers program in 2004. She has received a fellowship in fiction from the South Carolina Academy of Authors, has twice won the South Carolina Fiction Prize and earned the Walter E. Dakin Fellowship in Fiction at the 2005 Sewanee Writers' Conference in Sewanee, Tenn. Mindy's website >>