Fund: Professor Maurya Simon Scholarship Fund in Creative Writing Department: Creative Writing Dept D01035 Purpose: Graduate or Undergraduate Student Support History and Purpose: Professor Maurya Simon has been teaching at UCR for twenty years. She has just stepped down as chair of the Creative Writing Department. She completed her undergraduate work at UC Berkeley and Pitzer College, and received her Master’s of Fine Arts in English and Poetry from UC Irvine. She has been published in numerous periodicals including The New Yorker and the LA Times Book Review, and she has also been the recipient of many honors and awards both within and outside of her academic institutions. Simon is currently in the process of writing several new works, and she has just completed a novel-in-verse entitled The Raindrops Gospel: The Trials of St. Jerome and St. Paula, which she anticipates will be released sometime in 2006. She is also working on three new book projects: one about ancient rock art in Mexico, the Southwest, and Europe, as well as a travel diary about India, featuring memoirs from her travels there, and, finally, an anthology of ekphrastic poetry, that is, of poems based on visual works of art. In the future, Professor Simon plans to further explore and pursue her interest in world religions, particularly Eastern religions and the ideas of eros and the divine. Selection and Guidelines: To support graduate and undergraduate students in the Department of Creative Writing with a specific focus on students studying and composing works of poetry. Request for Information: Request Scholarship Information