Dr. Barbara Hurd, author, poet and professor of English at Frostburg State University, has been awarded a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award for 2010. Hurd is the only Western Maryland resident to receive an MSAC award this year.
Hurd is the author of a trilogy of critically acclaimed creative nonfiction works, “Stirring the Mud: On Swamps, Bogs, and Human Imagination,” “Entering the Stone: On Caves and Feeling through the Dark” and “Walking the Wrack Line: On Tidal Shift and What Remains,” as well as two volumes of poetry, “The Singer’s Temple” and “Objects in this Mirror.” Her essays and poetry have appeared in numerous publications, including “Best American Essays” in 1999 and 2001, The Yale Review, The Georgia Review, Orion and Audubon.
This is Hurd’s fifth MSAC individual artist award, but the first for fiction. “It's new territory for me, and I’m pleased to have this new work recognized,” Hurd said.
She also teaches creative writing in the Stonecoast MFA program at the University of Southern Maine, and this summer will be teaching at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts and at Chatham University. She will be retiring from FSU in July.
She is the recipient of a 2002 NEA Fellowship for Creative Nonfiction, winner of the Sierra Club’s National Nature Writing Award and Pushcart Prizes in 2004 and 2007.
Situated in the mountains of Allegany County, Frostburg State University is one of the 12 institutions of the University System of Maryland. FSU is a comprehensive, residential regional university and serves as an educational and cultural center for Western Maryland. For more information, visit www.frostburg.edu or facebook.com/frostburgstateuniversity.
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