Meet the SCMF Recipients

2023 SCMF-FPP Sandra Carpenter Prize for Creative Nonfiction Winner

Candace Eros Diaz

Candace Eros Diaz is the 2023 recipient of the SCMF-FPP Sandra Carpenter Prize for Creative Nonfiction. She is a queer Xicana novelist, short story writer, and essayist. Originally from Fresno, Calif., the writer is currently based in unceded Lisjan Ohlone territory—also known as Oakland, Calif.

Candace’s book, Cleofas, is a semi-fictional account of the life of her great-grandmother, in Durango, Mexico, and the series of events that led to her migration to California. Cleofas tells the story of the ways her grandmother “(re)discovers, (re)imagines, and (re)claims her identity as an Indigenous Mexican woman, wife, and mother becoming an American.”

Find Candace on her website, on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

“[Kezia and I] geeked out on writing and books and what these things meant to Sandra. I felt genuine care and curiosity about my great-grandmother's story, how it came to be, and what it hopes to be. These opportunities are so important for us writers. I am so grateful.” ~ Candace Eros Diaz

2023 SCMF-SWF Ohio Writers Scholarship Winner

Shaheen Sheik-Sadhal

The Sandra Carpenter Memorial Fund is delighted to announce Shaheen Sheik-Sadhal as the recipient of the 2023 SCMF-SWF Ohio Writers Scholarship. Shaheen was born in Ohio to Indian immigrants. Her work explores the South Asian diaspora’s immigration stories, feminism and matriarchy, and celebrates the diversity of the human experience. Shaheen is a two-time Alum of the Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation, and she lives in SoCal with her husband, their two children, and a lazy English lab, Nahla.

Shaheen shared an excerpt from her creative nonfiction memoir, which captures the nostalgia of small town life in Ohio juxtaposed against an immigrant woman’s aching for something more. The memoir chronicles a mother and daughter’s adventure as they left everything they knew in Strongsville, OH, including her father and tight-knit South Indian community, to start anew in Southern California. The manuscript explores matriarchy, tradition versus modernity, and the mystical dance between a mother and daughter as they navigate generational trauma with compassion and forgiveness. 

Find Shaheen on Instagram, on Twitter, and at her website, ShaheenSheik.com.

When Kezia Carpenter told me the news, I was shocked to hear I won the SCMF-SWF Ohio Writers Scholarship. I even asked her, “Are you kidding me? I am thrilled to represent writing talent from Ohio and grateful for and humbled by the support to bring my manuscript to publication and expand my network and community internationally. Stockholm, here I come! ~ Shaheen Sheik-Sadhal

2022 SCMF-FPP Sandra Carpenter Prize for Creative Nonfiction Winner

Calla Jacobson

Calla Jacobson was named winner of the 2022 SCMF-FPP Creative Nonfiction Prize.

Calla’s memoir, The Tiger’s Paw Print, tells the story of a young woman who journeys to the Himalayas to research myth, song, and power. What she does not anticipate is that she will fall in love, conceive a child in a cave above a river, and be faced with choices that will change everything she thought she knew about who she is and who she can become.

Calla spent a semester in Nepal in 1984. She has a PhD in anthropology and an MFA in creative nonfiction. She lives in Colorado.

“I was stunned and delighted to hear I’d won the Sandra Carpenter Prize for Creative Nonfiction! I’m especially grateful that you told me so much about Sandra, because now I feel her support somehow as well!” ~ Calla Jacobson

2022 SCMF-SWF Ohio Writers Scholarship Winner

Grace Dobush

The winner of the 2022 SCMF-SWF Ohio Writers Scholarship was Grace Dobush.

Grace, a freelance journalist based in Berlin, was born, raised and educated in Ohio. The SCMF Scholarship Committee selected Grace on the merits of her comic novel, Dayton Beach, which she describes as “a love letter to the Midwest and to queer friendship.”

Read Grace’s interview with the SWF team here.

I was really surprised, but I take it as a sign from the universe that this is the year I finally sell my novel, Dayton Beach. ~ Grace Dobush


2021 SCMF-SWF Ohio Writers Scholarship Winner

Autumn Shah

Autumn Shah was the 2021 SCMF-SWF Ohio Writers Scholarship recipient.

Autumn lives in the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio, with her husband and two teenage girls. Her fiction has won local awards, and her creative nonfiction has been published in several literary journals. You can also read some of her writing here.

And read Autumn’s 2021 interview with the SWF team here.

It is a great honor to accept the SCMF-SWF Ohio Writers Scholarship award. Sandra’s legacy of sharing her passions and inspiring a worldview in others through writing is inspirational. This award means so much to me, not only for the opportunities it includes, but for the significance to Sandra’s memory.” ~ Autumn Shah


2021 SCMF-FPP Sandra Carpenter Prize for Creative Nonfiction Winner

Allison Ellis

Allison Ellis was named the recipient of the 2021 Sandra Carpenter Prize for Creative Nonfiction.

Allison is a Seattle-based writer whose essays have appeared in The New York TimesSELFPloughshares, Amazon Original Stories and The Washington Post. She holds a MFA in creative nonfiction from Bennington Writing Seminars.

Allison’s memoir Ready About: A Memoir is about a haunting. Written as a letter from a widow to a husband who died suddenly in 2003, an uncanny family portrait emerges—a narrative which offers an unexpected exploration of what we owe our dead, how they live among us, and where memories take surprising turns.

My memoir is part ghost story, part travel memoir. Since Sandra Carpenter was a travel writer living abroad, I like to think that she had a hand in this as well.” ~Allison Ellis


2020 SCMF-FPP Sandra Carpenter Prize for Creative Nonfiction Winner

Allison Hong Merrill Headshot.jpg

Allison Hong Merrill

Winner of the 2020 SCMF-FPP Sandra Carpenter Prize for Creative Nonfiction
allisonhongmerrill.com
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Ninety-Nine Firehoops: A Memoir Published in September 2021

Allison Hong Merrill was the first winner of the SCMF-FPP Sandra Carpenter Prize for Creative Nonfiction for her memoir, Ninety-Nine Fire Hoops. Her book was published September 2021.

In her memoir, Allison tells how, as a 19-year-old Taiwanese Mormon girl, she meets a 20-year-old, rebellious American Mormon missionary, Cameron Chastain, in Taipei and elopes with him to his hometown in Texas when she is just 22. 

Sixteen months into their marriage, one day Allison goes home to their apartment and discovers that during her two-hour absence Cameron has moved everything out, cut off all services, withdrawn all the money in their bank account, and served her divorce papers. From a powerless, abandoned immigrant bride to a confident woman in command of her own destiny, Ninety-Nine Fire Hoops tells the story of how Allison’s choice to break the Chinese cultural expectation for women to submit to men’s will allows her to create her own path.

Discover all the winners of the 2020 First Pages prize in the video below.