The Jeannine Cooney Scholarship for Excellence in Fiction is awarded to the most distinguished candidate in fiction. The award covers a writer's full tuition and lodging at the Hotel Friuli in Udine.

Born in France in 1927, Jeannine Cooney grew up in a small town just north of Paris. Her education was interrupted by the advent of World War II, an event that also spelled the end of her close-knit family. In 1950 Jeannine boarded the Queen Mary bound for the United States to start a new life on her own. She eventually married Terrence Cooney and raised four sons. Throughout her life she was a strong supporter of her sons’ academic and artistic pursuits. She was a great lover of the arts, from the music of her beloved Edith Piaf, to suspense movies, to opera. Many times in her life she relied on the aid of others, and it is in her memory that the Cooney family is proud to offer this scholarship.

The Frederick E. Hart Scholarship for Excellence in Nonfiction is awarded to the most distinguished candidate in nonfiction. The award covers a writer's full tuition and lodging at the Hotel Friuli in Udine.

Frederick E. Hart was an internationally recognized artist, the creator of hundreds of works of art, most famous for his inspiring sculptures at Washington National Cathedral and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. As a sculptor, as a philosopher of art, as a lover of literature, and as a friend, husband, father, and mentor, Hart was the resident expert on all matters of aesthetic taste. According to Hart, "Art must be a part of life. It must exist in the domain of the common man. It must be an enriching, ennobling, and vital partner… It should be a majestic presence in everyday life." It is in his memory that the Hart family is proud to offer this scholarship.

The Giacomo Leopardi Scholarship for Excellence in Poetry is awarded to the most distinguished candidate in poetry. The award is only offered when the conference offers a Poetry genre.

Giacomo Leopardi was born in Recanati, Italy in 1798. Considered by many to be the greatest Italian poet of the nineteenth century, his reflections on existence and on the human condition brought a deep sense of morality and sensuous romanticism to his poetry. He has long been recognized as one of the most radical and challenging thinkers of his time. The strongly lyrical quality of his poetry made him a central figure on the European and international literary and cultural landscape, and the Founders of the Leopardi Writing Conference are proud to offer this scholarship to honor the most famous son of Recanati.

2023 Jeannine Cooney Scholar

Caitlin A. Quinn lives in Northern California with her partner and two badly behaved Airedale terriers. Her short fiction has appeared or is upcoming in the anthologies Murder on Her Mind and Memento Mori, and the journals Blood & Bourbon, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, and Bending Genres, among others. She placed 12th out of 5,000 competitors in NYC Midnight’s 2023 Short Story Competition, and her work has been nominated for a Kirkwood Prize, been “highly commended” by the Seán Ó Faoláin International Short Story Competition, as well as having been shortlisted for Uncharted Magazine’s Thrilling Short Story Award. A former Fulbright Scholar, she is a member of Stony Brook University’s BookEnds Fellowship Seven and is represented by Heather Jackson of the Heather Jackson Literary Agency, who is taking her debut novel out on submission. Please visit her at https://www.caitlinaquinnwriter.com/

2023 Giacomo Leopardi Scholar

Kendall Grady is a poet/ educator/scholar at UC Santa Cruz, where they write toward a media poetics of love and the couplet form. Grady is the forthcoming winner of Action, Spectacle’s Editor’s Choice Award, and poetry workshopped at the Leopardi Conference is a finalist for Witness Magazine’s Literary Awards. Grady’s work has also been the third place winner of the Palette Poetry Sappho Prize; a finalist for the Grist ProForma Contest and the Robert Philips Poetry Chapbook Prize; shortlisted for the Disquiet Prize, and longlisted for the Frontier Poetry Chapbook Contest. Their nonfiction can be found at Bridge Eight and LARB’s PubLab. Grady lives between the mountains and the sea with the heartland in their gut.

2023 Frederick E. Hart Scholar

Born and raised in Lowell, Massachusetts, Carrie Powers is a teacher and school administrator with over 35 years of experience working with refugees and immigrants in the United States, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, Spain and Indonesia. Currently, she is working with migrants from Haiti, Venezuela, Honduras, and Cuba and she has started to write a series of “Migrant Stories” for the Bedford Citizen Newspaper in Bedford, Massachusetts. Her current manuscript, The Ghost of Khmer Rouge, is set against the backdrop of the Khmer Rouge genocide that took place in Cambodia from 1975-1979. She holds a Master’s Degree in Education and she was enrolled in a Doctoral Program in Language Arts and Literacy at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell and she was ABD. She received a Certificate in Advanced Graduate Studies in Reading and Language. In 2008 She currently lives in Westford, MA with her son Matthew and their dog Oliver.

2022 Jeannine Cooney Scholar

Michelle Walshe is a writer from Dublin, Ireland. Her work has been published in literary journals, anthologies, newspapers, and magazines. She has been awarded residencies in Ireland at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Tin Jug Studio and Greywood Arts. In 2020, she won the Iceland Writers Retreat Alumni Award. In 2021, she was the recipient of an Emerging Artist award from Dun Laoghaire County Council and her work has received funding from Creative Ireland and the Arts Council of Ireland. She is writing her first novel which was highly commended in the Irish Writers Centre Novel Fair 2022. In the same year she was awarded the Leopardi Writing Conference’s Jeannine Cooney Scholarship for excellence in fiction. In Dublin, she volunteers for Roddy Doyle’s Fighting Words and the International Literature and Dalkey Book festivals. Her published work is on her website www.thesparklyshell.com

2022 Giacomo Leopardi Scholar

Shevaun Brannigan’s work has appeared in such journals as Best New Poets, AGNI, Slice, and Bat City Review. She is a recipient of a Barbara J. Deming Fund grant, and holds an MFA from Bennington College. In 2022, following The Leopardi Writing Conference in Recanati, Italy, she pursued independent study in Killeagh, Ireland at Greywood Arts Residency. A native of Maryland, she has now called Philadelphia home for more than a decade. https://shevaunbrannigan.com/

2022 Frederick E. Hart Scholar

Kent Shell spent his childhood in West Texas, Oklahoma and Virginia. His work has been awarded a fellowship at the Edward F. Albee Foundation in Montauk, New York, and the Frederick E. Hart Scholarship for Excellence in Nonfiction at the Leopardi Writing Conference, and has appeared at MoMA PS1 and in McSweeneys Internet Tendency. He holds a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University and was a painter for a long time, until he became a writer. He lives in Brooklyn and Hudson, New York, with his wife and their pandemic puppy, Cleo and their semi-feral cat with no name. He is at work on a memoir.

2019 Jeannine Cooney Scholar

Stephanie Gangi’s award-winning work includes fiction, essays, and poetry. Her acclaimed debut novel, The Next, was published by St. Martin’s Press. Carry the Dog, her second novel, was completed at the Leopardi Writing Conference in 2019 and published by Algonquin Books in 2021. The shorter work has appeared in both print and online literary magazines. Gangi is a developmental editor and writing coach. She lives in New York City and is at work on her third novel, The Good Provider.

2019 Leopardi Giacomo Scholar

Robert Wood Lynn is the author of the collection Mothman Apologia (Yale University Press, 2022), selected by Rae Armantrout as the winner of the 2021 Yale Younger Poets prize and by the New York Times as one of its Best Poetry Books of 2022. His chapbook How To Maintain Eye Contact is out from Button Poetry in January 2023. He is the recipient of grants, fellowships and awards from New York University, the Academy of American Poets, the James Merrill House and other institutions. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, Poetry Daily, Harvard Review, The Southern Review, The Yale Review and other journals.

2019 Frederick E. Hart Scholar

Born and raised in the coal region of Pennsylvania, Rachel Kesselman is a writer living in Paris, France. Her work has been awarded the Carlisle Family Scholarship for the Squaw Valley Community of Writers Workshop and residencies at artist colonies including the Sundress Academy for the Arts, Welcome Hill Studios and the Bordeneuve Retreat for Artists and Writers. An active member of the Paris literary community, Rachel has participated in readings and workshops with associations including SpokenWord Paris and the Paris Fringe Festival. She holds a BA from Bryn Mawr College and a Master's from the Sorbonne.

Rachel and her husband are now Workshop Directors at La Muse Writers and Artists Retreat in the South of France: https://www.lamuseretreat.com/workshops/