MWC Announces the Winner of the 2025 Great River Writer’s Retreat — Stella Joyce Krall
Congratulations to this year’s winner of the great River Writer’s Retreat, Stella Joyce Krall of Madison, WI!
Stella Joyce Krall has an MFA in fiction from New York University, where she worked with Katie Kitamura, Nathan Englander, Brandon Taylor, and Darin Strauss. Prior to that, Krall spent a decade as a bioethicist reviewing human medical trials for ethical and scientific integrity. Her not-yet-published novel PARALLAX was a finalist in the 2024 Faulkner-Wisdom Competition. She graduated with a BA in anthropology, focusing on primatology, from the University of Wisconsin, where she took several creative writing and journalism courses. In her careers in primatology and bioethics, she published scientific papers in The American Journal of Primatology. Since returning to creative writing, she has attended writing conferences and workshops, including the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Writers’ Institute. She spends her free time on the front porch curled up with a book, or hanging out with her husband and teen son, or travelling to learn about history.
Krall will be in residence August 25 – 31, 2025, at Benet House Retreat Center in Rock Island, preparing one novel manuscript for publication “that looks at the nature of memory and whether a person’s culpability for previous actions is excused if they lose their memory due to dementia rather than repression,” while developing a newer manuscript about “a pair of college friends whose lives have diverged despite their physical and emotional closeness.” She will share some of her work during a public reading at The Atlas Collective (1801 5th Ave., Moline, IL) on Saturday, August 30 at 4pm.
The Great River Writer’s Retreat winner is selected from an applicant pool of writers from Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin across multiple genres, and allows the winner to spend a week working on a specific writing project they have underway. In 2025, we had our largest applicant pool in the history of the Retreat. This year’s finalists include:
Amelia Colwell (Roseville, MN)
Mario Duarte (Iowa City IA)
Elizabeth Felt (Stevens Point, WI)
E. S. Fletcher (Saint Paul, MN)
Elise Gregory (Baraboo, WI)
Kristin Gifford (Minneapolis, MN)
S. Keyron McDermott (Cascade, IA)
Donna O’Shaughnessy (Saunemin, IL)
The Great River Writer’s Retreat Contest will open for all writers on November 1, 2025 and close on May 1, 2026. The retreat dates for 2026 are TBD. For more information, please visit http://www.mwcqc.org/contests/writers-retreat/
The Great River Writer’s Retreat is generously sponsored by Dr. Nicolas Shammas and the Illinois Arts Council.