UNE’s Maine Women Writers Collection awards first Creative Fellowship to Devon Kelley-Yurdin

Devon Kelley-Yurdin, an interdisciplinary artist, educator and cultural organizer, is the recipient of the Maine Women Writers Collection first Creative Fellowship.

In April 2019, the Maine Women Writers Collection awarded its first Creative Fellowship to Devon Kelley-Yurdin, an interdisciplinary artist, educator and cultural organizer. The fellowship enables Kelley-Yurdin to access the collections holdings.

Grounded in the belief that creativity can be found everywhere and is vital to holistic community care, Kelley-Yurdin’s practice spans traditional media (printmaking, cut-paper, installation), design/illustration/art direction, event production, arts administration and community organizing, and it explores ideas of home, collectivity, celebration and queerness.

Kelley-Yurdin holds a B.F.A. in Communications Design and Cultural Studies from Pratt Institute and has spent more than a decade working in the fields of community arts and cultural development, community-based education and cooperative/collective/alternative models. A member of Pickwick Independent Press, a fine art community print shop, Kelley-Yurdin co-organizes partnerships that bridge printmaking and social justice work.

Kelley-Yurdin also hosts a series of experimental living room performances and co-facilitates a bi-weekly movement class.

As the inaugural MWWC Creative Fellow, Kelley-Yurdin will be continuing ongoing visual and written explorations of the relationship between queerness and nature, inspired and informed by the work, journals and ephemera of poet May Sarton.