Nonfiction writer APRICOT IRVING will receive a 2011 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award, which is given annually to six women writers who demonstrate excellence and promise in the early stages of their careers. Apricot spent part of her youth in Haiti with her parents, Jon and Florence (Flip) Anderson, volunteers with International Ministries (IM) related programs. Former IM missionaries in Haiti, Bernice and Herb Rogers, served together with the Andersons at the Good Samaratian Hospital in Limbe.

Apricot’s (www.apricotirving.com) work in progress, The Missionary’s Daughter, is about growing up on a missionary compound in Haiti. It is a deeply personal story about her father’s work and devotion to the country and its people and the personal toll it took on his family. It is also the larger story of Haiti and the explorers and reformers that have shaped its history. She says, “Over the past ten years, while living on three separate continents, I have struggled to describe the ambitious, renegade hospital compound that I once called home. I would tell of the missionaries’ jealousy and ambition, of their sacrifice and longing, of the endless, unwinnable battle to save Haiti—this reformer's paradise, colonist's bane.”  Ms. Irving plans to use her Writer’s Award for writing space and childcare, as well as to return to Haiti for an extended period to re-immerse herself in the language and culture, “to re-absorb into the bloodstream those elusive details” that she wants to capture in this book. Her work has appeared on This American Life and an excerpt from her memoir will be published in More magazine later this year. She received her B.A. from University of Tennessee-Knoxville and her M.A. in creative nonfiction from Portland State University. She is a freelance writer and founder and director of Boise Voices Oral History Project, a creative neighborhood response to gentrification. She lives with her husband and two sons in Portland, Oregon.

Celebrating its 17^th year, the Rona Jaffe Awards have helped many women build successful writing careers by offering encouragement and financial support at a critical time. The Awards of $25,000 each will be presented to the six recipients on September 22^nd in New York City.

Celebrated novelist Rona Jaffe (1931-2005) established The Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Awards program in 1995. It is the only national literary awards program of its kind dedicated to supporting women writers exclusively. Since the program began, the Foundation has awarded more than $1 million to emergent women writers, including several who have gone on to critical acclaim, such as Elif Batuman, Eula Biss, Judy Budnitz, Lan Samantha Chang, Rebecca Curtis, Rivka Galchen, Kathleen Graber, Frances Hwang, Aryn Kyle, ZZ Packer, Tracy K. Smith, Mary Szybist, and Julia Whitty.