Announcing the Winner of the 2023 Great River Writers Retreat!
Congratulations to this year’s winner of the great River Writers Retreat, Dee Robb!
Dee Robb holds degrees in Communication, Education, and English as a Second Language, with a certificate in Creative Writing from UW-Madison. Her poetry can be found in the Highland Community College press, Oprelle’s Rise Up Anthology, Illinois Reading Today, and The Illinois Reading Council Journal. She was a short story first-place winner of Galesburg Public Library’s Big Write in 2022 with her story Ebonne’s First Day of School, and a second-place winner of poetry in 2023 with her poem, Losing Her Face. She is a member of the American Academy of Poets, the Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, and the Midwest Writing Center. She currently teaches ESL in the Galesburg School District and serves on the Mercer County Family Crisis Center Board of Directors. She lives with her husband Russell in rural Illinois, has a daughter who is a law student at the University of Arkansas, a son who farms their family Centennial Farm, a daughter-in-love who is an ob/gyn nurse, and two delightful grandchildren. She is beyond honored to be this year’s Great River Writers Retreat winner.
Robb will be in residence July 25-31, 2023, at Benet House Retreat Center in Rock Island, concentrating on a story-in-verse project about teen domestic violence. She will share some of her work-in-progress as one of the featured readers at the SPECTRA Reading Series event at Rozz-Tox (2108 3rd Ave, Rock Island, IL) at 7:00 p.m. on Thursday, July 27.
The Great River Writers 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. This year’s finalists include:
Angela Chenus (Davenport, IA)
Tate Lewis-Carroll (El Paso, IL)
Kathrine Yets (St. Francis, WI)
The Great River Writer’s Retreat Contest will open for all writers on November 1, 2023 and close on May 1, 2024. The retreat dates for 2024 are TBD.
The Great River Writer’s Retreat is generously sponsored by Dr. Nicolas Shammas and the Illinois Arts Council Agency.