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The Lynch and Sons Fund for the Arts, founded in 2016, endeavors to intervene in the lives of Michigan artists to encourage new work
of lasting merit. Poets, writers, musicians and filmmakers, photographers and fine artists are among those to be considered in
awarding The Moveen Prizes–travel grants and month-long residencies in townland on the Loophead peninsula of West Clare, Ireland,
in the ancestral home of poet and writer, Thomas Lynch. The Lynch and Sons Fund for the Arts is a 501(c)3 organization.
Five Years In -An Update
When the Lynch & Sons Fund for the Arts came into being, the gifting of time and money seemed like something that would make a difference in the lives of artists. Five years in and fifty thousand dollars in individual grants and months of quiet in West Clare, Ireland added to smaller stipends and sponsorships of programs has added to a
sense that the support of artists and the arts may be among the highest and best uses of spendable income.
These smaller grants and stipends assist with travel, expand an audience, to honor work of singular merit, and have been paid to the poets: Alison Swan, Vivee Francis, The Detroit Song Collective for Womyns Work Exhibit at Scarab Club, Detroit, Theotokos --New Visions on the Mother of God and the Feminine Divine, a curated exhibit sponsored by Lynch & Sons Fund for the Arts.
The Moveen Prizes
The Moveen Prizes, awarded in different categories, are gifts of transport, time, and space for the imagination.
Travel grants for airlines, car rental, and incidental expenses are added to extended residencies in a small cottage in the townland of Moveen, on the Atlantic coast of County Clare, in Ireland.
Funded by Lynch and Sons Fund for the Arts, The Moveen Prize recognizes early promise, ongoing excellence, and lasting merit in the work of Michigan artists in a variety of genres and pursuits.
There is no application process. They are awarded annually in January, on the feast of the epiphany.
Donors
Lynch & Sons Fund for the Arts is grateful to its donors for their support of our cause and endeavors. Without these generous people, our gifts of time and money would not be possible.
Beth Miller
Anne Murray and Kathleen Hughes
Daphne Emilie Hodder
Mark Higgins
Amy J. Moore
Yvonne Lynch
Col Daniel Lynch and Marlene Lynch
Suzanne Rumsey
Patrick Lynch and Mary Callaghan
John Smolens
Thomas Lynch
Roscoe Smith
2023 Award
Pictured from left to right are David Knight Jr, Raven Phillips Love, Priscilla Hintz Rivera Knight and Lauren Prince
2023 Moveen Prize in Poetry
Baristas, Poets, Gallery Owners and Community Arts Advocates and Stars bring Moveen Prize in Poetry to St. John, USVI
Lynch & Sons Fund for the Arts is pleased to present the 2023 Moveen Prize for Poetry to The Rhyme & Lime Poetry Forum at Bajo El Sol Gallery on St. John, USVI.
The Rhyme & Lime Poetry forum was founded in 2019 by Jamaica Hamilton at Bajo El Sol Gallery with collaboration from gallery co-owners David Knight Jr. & Priscilla Hintz Rivera Knight. Hamilton served as Rhyme & Lime’s host & coordinator through 2020. In 2021, poet and writer Raven Philips took over as host. In 2021, saxophone and vocals duo ‘From Broheem with Love’ joined the program as the unofficial ‘house band’ of the Rhyme and Lime.
Held on the last Saturday of every month – even meeting virtually during the pandemic – the Rhyme and Lime has hosted poets, musicians and spoken word artists of every experience level from around the world. Although the island that is home to the Rhyme and Lime claims a population of less than 5,000 people, the event’s reach has extended far beyond its shores, welcoming visiting performers from around the Virgin Islands, the rest of the Caribbean and the United States.
Current host Raven Phillips has been a member of the St. John community since 2010. Through spending her formative years commuting between St. Thomas and St. John, she has gained a deep appreciation for community bonds and advocating for structural change in the Virgin Islands. She highly values cultural preservation, research, and self-expression through artistic mediums.
Raven is also a writer and poet. Her works have appeared in the St. John Tradewinds, the V.I. Source, Destination Magazine, and The Caribbean Writer. In addition to hosting the Rhyme and Lime, she has also hosted multiple poetry workshops for different age groups and skill levels. Additionally, she has been a Bamboula dancer for five years. She leads a performance group called The Coziah Dancers, and she teaches Bamboula through the St. John School of the Arts.
About Bajo El Sol Gallery:
Priscilla Hintz Rivera Knight and David Knight Jr., Bajo El Sol Gallery & Art Bar owners since 2016, are proud of the gallery’s 30-year legacy of support and engagement with the arts community of St. John and the greater Virgin Islands. The gallery is home to thought-provoking monthly exhibitions, readings by award winning V.I. writers & poets, documentary screenings on some of the Caribbean’s most respected thinkers, talks by local academics and visiting curators.
Bajo El Sol Gallery is also home of the Gri Gri Project. The Gri Gri Project’s mission is the creation of interpretive exhibitions, critical writing, events and archives related to the cultural patrimony of the U.S. Virgin Islands and the broader Caribbean region.
Priscilla Hintz Rivera and David Knight Jr. purchased the art gallery Bajo El Sol Gallery in 2016 after years of working individually and as a team in the arts and cultural fields in the Virgin Islands, the United States and the greater Caribbean region. As St. John’s oldest and longest-operating gallery – representing many of the Virgin Islands’ most renowned visual artists – Rivera and Knight saw the acquisition of Bajo El Sol, founded in the early 1990s, as a great opportunity to make an investment in the cultural production of their home islands and continue the gallery’s legacy of promoting the arts to both residents and visitors.
Hintz Rivera and Knight both grew up in the Virgin Islands and the Caribbean region, and they love engaging visitors about Caribbean history and the dynamics of the current society on St. John. They hope to make every visitor’s experience of St. John not only enjoyable but rich in ways that deepen understanding and appreciation of this amazing, complex Caribbean island.
In addition to Priscilla Hintz Rivera Knight, David Knight Jr. and Raven Phillips, the current Bajo El Sol Gallery team includes Lauren Prince. Prince is a scholar and student of (Black) feminist studies and environmental justice with ancestral roots in St. John, USVI. She graduated with the highest distinction from the University of Virginia, double majoring in Political & Social Thought (Areas of Study: Environmental Disaster; Displacement, Migration, and Human Rights; and Systems of Oppression) and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies with a minor in Global Sustainability. She is an Echols Scholar, University Achievement Award Recipient, and co-founder and former co-president of the Environmental Justice Collective, an organization for and by BIPOC students. She recently served as the first executive director of St.JanCo: The St. John Heritage Collective, a community land trust located on the island of St. John.
“An appreciation for the connections between place, language and the arts informs both the Moveen Prize and the Rhyme and Lime Poetry Forum,” says Thomas Lynch, who has visited on St. John over the past thirty winters and has seen Bajo El Sol go from strength to strength in connecting the diverse cultures of the West Indies and Lesser Antilles and the wider world, through literary and fine arts, music and film.
2022 Awards
Monica Rico
2022 Moveen Prize in Poetry
Lynch & Sons Fund for the Arts has named Monica Rico of Ann Arbor winner of the 2022 Moveen Prize in Poetry.
Ms. Rico holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program and is the Program Manager for the Bear River Writers’ Conference where she is Editor in Chief of the Bear River Review. Her first full-length collection of poetry, Pinion, is the winner of the Four Way Books Levis Prize selected by Kaveh Akbar.
She is a Mexican American CantoMundo Fellow, Macondista, and Hopwood Graduate Poetry Award winner who is from Saginaw, Michigan. Her magical realist poems have appeared in Poetry Northwest’s Feature Life List, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Nation, Poet Lore, Witness, The Missouri Review, the museum of americana, Gastronomica, Terrain.org, Frontier Poetry, The Rupture, Waxwing, Essay Daily, The Fiddlehead, Poetry Daily, Sporklet 12, The Breakbeat Poets Vol.4 LatiNext, Anomaly, Pleiades, Black Warrior Review, BOAAT, and Split this Rock.
On hearing of Monica Rico’s award, Keith Taylor, former director of the BRWC and colleague said, “Over these last couple of years, Monica Rico has proven herself to be one of the finest new poets to enter the publishing scene. Her prize-winning book will help convince everyone who's paying attention, once it is released next year. I, for one, am very pleased to imagine her spending some good time in West Clare!”
The Moveen Prize in Poetry includes a month-long residency in the ancestral home of writer, Thomas Lynch, in the townland of Moveen, in West Clare, Ireland and a cash stipend to pay for travel and related expenses. It is awarded in hopes of supporting work of lasting merit. Lynch & Sons Fund for the Arts is a 501(C)3 Arts Foundation founded in 2016 and it awards annual prizes in Poetry and Humanities.
Isaac Perry
2022 Moveen Prize in Humanities
Isaac Perry of Milford has won the Moveen Prize in Humanities, an annual award presented by Lynch & Sons Fund for the Arts, for his work as a community volunteer, advocate and organizer.
Mr. Perry is the co-founder and Chair of the Huron Valley Martin Luther King Day Committee, which has, since 2004, organized the March on Main Street in observance of the holiday that honors the civil rights leader and his vision of a beloved community achieved through nonviolence, civic engagement and racial justice. Isaac Perry’s work with the committee has made it a vehicle for positive involvement in a variety of civic and cultural projects for citizens of all ages. And the MLK Day observance has become, in keeping with Dr. King’s spirit, a local day of service rather than a day off of school and work.
Over the years, Mr. Perry has implemented a Multicultural Fair, Multicultural Fashion Show, and Diversity-oriented symposium and breakout sessions to encourage community discussion on issues of tolerance and equality and collaborated with Michigan Roundtable for Diversity and Inclusion, Michigan Peace Team, Swords into Ploughshares Peace Center, La Sed, and other organizations in pursuit of community welfare.
A graduate of Milford High School and Michigan State University, Mr. Perry has been a teacher with Huron Valley Schools since 2003, and serves as Chair of the Lakeland High School English Department. He has been honored for his excellence in education and volunteer efforts with a wide variety of student organizations and curricula development efforts.
He is a founding member and board secretary of the Huron Valley Film Organization which has been responsible for restoration and preservation of the Milford Independent Cinema, Milford’s historic hometown cinema, and serves on the board of the Village Fine Arts Association in Milford.
The Moveen Prize in Humanites includes a month-long residency in the ancestral home of writer, Thomas Lynch, in the townland of Moveen, in West Clare, Ireland and a cash stipend to pay for travel and related expenses. Mr. Perry plans to travel to Ireland with his son in the summer of 2023. Moveen Prizes are awarded in hopes of supporting and facilitating work of lasting merit. Lynch & Sons Fund for the Arts is a 501(C)3 Arts Foundation founded in 2016 and it awards annual prizes in Poetry and Humanities.
2021 Awards
Mursalata Muhammad
2021 Sweeney Memorial
Prize at Lines End
Grand Rapids Professor Wins Arts Residency
Mursalata Muhammad of Grand Rapids, MI has been awarded the inaugural Sweeney Memorial Boat House Residency at Lines End by Lynch & Sons Fund for the Arts. Designed to encourage emerging writers, the prize includes a stipend and a month-long residency at Lines End, the northern Michigan home, on the south shore of Mullett Lake, of writer, Thomas Lynch.
A graduate of Oakland University in Rochester, Professor Muhammad, who for twenty years has taught English at Grand Rapids Community College, is working on her PhD from Antioch University where she is a candidate in the Leadership and Change Program.. Her research and teaching interests focus on human literacy, educational equity, and social justice in education policy. She is also completing her first manuscript of poems.
Jamaica Hamilton
2021 Moveen Prize in
Poetry
Jamaica Hamilton, winner of the 2021 Moveen Prize in Poetry, is the founder of Rhyme & Lime, a monthly open mic poetry reading series on the island of St. John in the USVI, hosted by the Bajo El Sol Art Gallery in Cruz Bay. It connects poets throughout the Caribbean and around the world who now attend online, since the venue became virtual during the pandemic.
A graduate of the University of the Virgin Islands, Ms. Hamilton sees poetry as a way to reconnect people of diverse backgrounds even during times of social distancing and isolation. Born in Guatemala, and having lived in Europe and the United States, she has always found poetry to be one of the primary languages of all geographies and cultures, and people who read and write poetry are eager to understand each other.
Suzanne Rumsey
2021 Moveen Prize in Humanities
Lynch & Sons Fund for the Arts is pleased to announce that the 2021 Moveen Prize in Humanities (a/k/a The Nora Lynch Memorial Award for Living Life on Life’s Terms) is presented to Suzanne Rumsey of Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
The Moveen Prize in Humanities includes a stipend and month long residency in Moveen, Co. Clare, where Nora Lynch lived out her long life. Ms. Rumsey hopes to finish her Masters Thesis there as predicate to a longer examination of the life and writings – sermons, letters, an unpublished memoir -- of her father, the late Rev. Gavin Rumsey, an Anglican parish priest for over fifty years, in hopes of gaining a deeper understanding of the man and the impact of his long pastorate, during a time of great change in every aspect of religious engagement, including the life of faith and spiritual dynamics.
Ms. Rumsey, long associated with the Anglican Church of Canada, is currently the Public Engagement Coordinator for the Primate's World Relief and Development Fund (PWRDF), for whom she formerly served as Latin American/Caribbean Program Coordinator. Prior to this assignment, she served for ten years, on the Inter-Church Committee on Human Rights in Latin America. At present, Ms. Rumsey is completing her Masters of Theological Studies at Trinity College of the University of Toronto.
Lynch & Sons Fund for the Arts, founded in 2016 by Thomas Lynch, is a 501 © 3 Arts Foundation that endeavors to intervene in the lives of writers and artists who create work of lasting merit. It awards grants of money and time every year in Poetry and Humanities.
2020 Awards
Jessie Lendennie
2020 Moveen Prize in Poetry
To celebrate Poetry Day Ireland 2020, Lynch & Sons Fund for the Arts is pleased to announce that Jessie Lendennie, founder and editor of Salmon Poetry in County Clare, Ireland has won the Moveen Prize in Poetry for 2020. Ms. Lendennie will be presented the Moveen Prize at the AWP Conference, next March in Kansas City MO. Further details to follow.
Huron Valley MLK Day Committee
2020 Moveen Prize in Humanities
The Huron Valley MLKJr. Committee, founded and chaired by Isaac Perry of Milford, Michigan, is the recipient of the 2020 Moveen Prize in Humanities from Lynch & Sons Fund for the Arts. The Committee organizes the annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service and March on Main St. as well as year-round programs of community outreach and engagement in service of Dr. King’s vision of the Beloved Community. The committee sponsors food drives, lectures, documentary film screenings, writing competitions for local students and seeks to educate and inspire the community in ways that honor the mission and memory of Martin Luther King, Jr.
2019 Awards
David Hornibrook
2019 Moveen Prize in Poetry
Lynch & Sons Fund for the Arts are pleased to announce that David Hornibrook of Roseville, MI has been awarded the 2019 Moveen Prize in Poetry, which includes a month long residency in Moveen, Co. Clare, in Ireland and a stipend to cover travel and related costs.
Mr. Hornibrooks first full-length collection of poetry, NIGHT MANUAL, is forthcoming from Wayne State University Press’s Made in Michigan Writers Series.
“David Hornibrook is a fresh and astonishing voice in poetry,” said Thomas Lynch, Director of Lynch & Sons Fund for the Arts. “His experiments in stanza form and white space, his ear for heightened diction, and the free range of his imagination, all sumptuously exhibited in his collection, Night Manual, herald the advent of a true maestro.”
David Hornibrook grew up in the suburbs of Detroit where he has worked for many years as a caregiver and non-profit administrator. He has served as Writer in Residence with InsideOut Literary Arts Project in Detroit and taught at the University of Michigan where he earned an MFA in Poetry and also served as a Zell Postgraduate Fellow. His poems have won multiple awards, including a 2014 Pushcart Prize. He will spend the month of August in West Clare working on a second collection of poems.
Jen Lynn Lewis
2019 Moveen Prize in Humanities
Born and raised in Southeast Michigan, Jen Lewis now lives near East Jordon, MI where she shares life on a nonprofit farm and education center wIth her partner and three teens, where they raise small ruminants, chickens and pigs, plus a few fruits and vegetables, and too many cats and dogs to mention. Jen loves connecting with others through learning from and teaching both children and adults. She really enjoys working on small, creative teams.
As a young adult, Jen wrote poetry as a way to work out things within her, then turned to observation of things outside herself. Of course, through the process she is figuring out that they are the same thing. She is working on her first manuscript, which explores the time she shared with her mother through cancer and end of life.
2018 Awards
Teresa Scollon
2018 Moveen Prize in Poetry
Teresa Scollon is a poet, essayist, editor, and educator.
Her publications include poetry collections Trees and Other Creatures (Alice Greene & Co., 2021) and To Embroider the Ground with Prayer (Wayne State University Press, 2012); the chapbook Friday Nights the Whole Town Goes to the Basketball Game (Michigan Writers Cooperative Press, 2009); and poems and essays in journals. Her work is included in Poetry in Michigan/ Michigan in Poetry from New Issues Press, and in Elemental, a 2018 anthology of essays about Michigan from Wayne State University Press.
She is a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow; alumna and past Writer-in-Residence at Interlochen Arts Academy. She received a fellowship from Western Michigan University’s Prague Summer Program, and won the 2018 Moveen Prize in Poetry.
A native of Michigan’s Thumb, she is interested in themes of community and story. She has served as chair of Michigan Writers, a literary collective devoted to supporting the development of writers in northern Michigan. She founded a writing workshop in northern Michigan for U.S. veterans.
Teresa teaches the North Ed Writers Studio (formerly Front Street Writers) program for high school students at the Northwest Education Services Career Tech in Traverse City, Michigan. She serves as senior editor, along with Jennifer Yeatts, for the literary journal Dunes Review.
Corrine D’Agostino
2018 Moveen Prize in Humanities
Corrine D’Agostino of East Jordon has been awarded the 2018 Moveen Prize in Humanities from Lynch & Sons Fund for the Arts. A native of Grand Rapids, and a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, she resides and works at Martha Wagbo Farm and Education Center in East Jordon where she facilitates building community through projects centered on seasonal food, ecology and environmental protection.
The Moveen Prize in Humanities seeks to honor the memory of the late Nora Lynch (1902 – 1992), who lived and farmed on the West Coast of Ireland on the Loop Head Peninsula and was an exemplar of living life on life’s terms, which is to say, making the most of limited resources and leaving the earth better than you found it. The prize includes a stipend and a month-long residency in Nora Lynch’s home in Moveen, now the ancestral home of writer, Thomas Lynch.
David Hornibrook grew up in the suburbs of Detroit where he has worked for many years as a caregiver and non-profit administrator. He has served as Writer in Residence with InsideOut Literary Arts Project in Detroit and taught at the University of Michigan where he earned an MFA in Poetry and also served as a Zell Postgraduate Fellow. His poems have won multiple awards, including a 2014 Pushcart Prize. He will spend the month of August in West Clare working on a second collection of poems.
2017 Awards
Cindy Hunter Morgan
2017 Moveen Prize in Poetry
Cindy Hunter Morgan of East Lansing has won the MOVEEN PRIZE IN POETRY for her first full-length collection of poems, HARBORLESS, forthcoming from Wayne State University Press.
The book, forty poems based on Great Lakes shipwrecks from the 19th and 20th Century, is part of the Made in Michigan Writers Series through which WSU Press seeks to highlight distinguished and diverse voices of writers from around the state.
A native Michigander, Cindy Hunter Morgan, graduated from Albion College in 1990 and teaches creative writing at Michigan State University. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University in Cambridge MA. The author of two award winning chapbooks, Apple Season, winner of Midwest Writing Center's 2012 Chapbook Contest, judged by Shane McCrae and The Sultan, The Skater, The Bicycle Maker, winner of The Ledge Press 2011 Poetry Chapbook Award, Ms. Hunter Morgan has read and lectured throughout the state and published widely in literary journals. Her work has been set to music and included in art exhibits.
The Moveen Prize in Poetry is presented by the Lynch & Sons Fund for the Arts, based in Milford. It includes a month long residency on the West Clare Peninsula in Ireland, in the ancestral home of writer, Thomas Lynch in the townland of Moveen, and a travel grant to cover airlines, local travel and living expenses.
“Cindy Hunter Morgan has wrought a Great Lakes classic,” Thomas Lynch writes in an encomium on the book jacket of HARBORLESS, “an epic paid out in local, heroic and poignant doses. Brava!”
Annie Martin, senior acquisitions editor at WSU Press, was delighted to add Harborless to its list of award winning books in poetry, fiction, and non-fiction published by Wayne State University Press. “We strive to bring the best of Detroit and Michigan artists to a regional and national audience. The Moveen Prize, with its Michigan roots and Irish connection assists in that core endeavor. We couldn’t be prouder of Cindy Hunter Morgan.”
Faith Taylor
2017 Moveen Prize in Humanities
Faith Taylor of Ann Arbor and Detroit, has won the MOVEEN PRIZE IN HUMANITIES and will travel to the West of Ireland to study the rapidly changing rural culture there in a community of small family farmers tied to the fields their ancestors have farmed for generations, increasingly impacted by high technologies, globalized economies and widespread tourism and immigration.
The Moveen Prize, established by the Lynch & Sons Fund for the Arts in Milford, Michigan includes a travel grant and month long residency in the townland of Moveen, Co. Clare, in the ancestral home of the writer, Thomas Lynch. Other prizes have been awarded in Music and in Poetry.
Faith Taylor is a graduate of Kalamazoo College where she earned a BA in Human Development and Social Relations & Art History with a concentration in Art and Play as extensions of communication for autistic students. No stranger to new forms of language, Ms. Taylor spent 2012 working and teaching at the Nirman Institute in Varanasi, India.
Traveling with her to Moveen will be her partner, the photographer, Jack Ritchey, who has worked with a variety of artists, and in a variety of mediums -- as editor and assistant to world-renowned photographer, Nan Goldin, production assistant to New York based performance artist, Kembra Pfahler and Studio Manager for the artist, Leif Ritchey of Ann Arbor. He has worked with museums, galleries and exhibit spaces in the U.S and throughout Western Europe.
Together Ms. Taylor and Mr. Ritchey hope to explore and document West Clare and the surrounding area through photographs and field notes, reflecting on Moveen as a natural and social space.
“The Moveen Prize endeavors to inspire artists by intervening in busy creative lives with free time and unique space --a new geography in which to produce work of lasting value. Ms. Taylor and Mr. Ritchey fit just such a profile,” says Paddy Lynch, who serves on the board of the Lynch & Sons Fund for the Arts. “Moveen is a special place for imaginative people.”