For the month of June, we welcome Brenna Dixon, a Florida native, but currently living and working in Iowa. Ms. Dixon is a writer and plans to use the residency to finish the collection of short stories -Sawgrass and the Broken Heart - that she drafted while earning her Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and Environment at Iowa State University. 
In her fiction writing, Dixon addresses the ideas of excess, loss, and monstrosity, as well as the nature of invasives in the Floridian environment. “I often look to craft elements of magical realism to tell a compelling story while engaging readers on the subject of Florida’s complex environmental issues,” she explains.
“My stories work to dispel the media-driven caricature of perfection in Florida’s environment and its inhabitants and express them, instead, as full-bodied and inseparable from one another,” says Dixon. “The degradation, complications, health, and well being of Florida’s peoples and its environment are dependent upon one another.”
The residency will allow Dixon to reacquaint herself with the environment and represent it even more accurately in her work. She will come home to the sawgrass, swamps, and salt flats that have shaped her writing.
I look forward to reading her work.
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