DU alumna Amanda Rea received the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s award in 2015. The $30,000 award is presented to exceptional young female writers as recognition for their special contributions to society. The award focuses on works of fiction, non-fiction and poetry and is meant to provide assistance for child care, research and/or travel related costs.

Rea graduated from DU in 2000, earning a BA in English with a focus on creative writing. She later received her MFA in creative writing from the University of California Irvine.

Rea currently teaches for Lighthouse Writers Workshop and has been a freelance writer with pieces in the Kenyon Review, the Missouri Review, the Sun and more. Rea also wrote a memoir piece titled “A Dead Man in Nashville,” that won a Pushcart Prize in 2011.

In an interview with the University of Denver Magazine, Amanda said that she’s using the award money to focus on her writing as a full time job. She also mentioned mentors that helped her, like Brian Kiteley, a DU English professor and past head of the DU creative writing PhD program, who recommended fellowships and accepted her into the PhD workshop.

Rea is currently married with a daughter and working on a book under the Jaffe Award about the Four Corners region of the United States during World War I. The novel focuses on what the Rona Jaffe Foundation’s press releases called, “the underbelly of the west—the poor and disenfranchised.” Rea grew up around this region in Marvel, Colorado, which sparked her interest in the story.

In an interview with DU Magazine she commented, “People seem interested in the other side of Colorado. Not the Aspen ski-bunny kind of thing, but the Colorado that exists for the people working in a basement laundry, washing sheets for the tourists or the people building the vacation homes.”

Some of Rea’s short stories like “Following Slowly” and “A Dead Man in Nashville” can be accessed on Electriclieterature.com and The Sun Magazine’s website.