WRITER IN RESIDENCE
January 14-28, 2022
Carter Sickels
Carter Sickels is the author of the novel The Prettiest Star (Hub City Press), winner of the 2021 Southern Book Prize and the Weatherford Award, and selected as a Kirkus Best Book of 2020 and a Best LGBT Book of 2020 by O Magazine. His debut novel The Evening Hour was a 2013 Oregon Book Award finalist and a Lambda Literary Award finalist.
His writing appears in various publications, including The Atlantic, Oxford American, Poets & Writers, BuzzFeed, Guernica, Joyland, and Catapult. Carter has received fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the MacDowell Colony, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. He is an assistant professor at Eastern Kentucky University.
Artist Statement
Carter’s writing explores gender and masculinity, queer survival, and intimacy and violence between men. He plans to use his time at Good Hart to work on a novel-in-progress about a transgender man whose twin brother spirals deeper into drug addiction. The healing power of nature plays a critical role in the protagonist’s development and narrative arc, and Carter looks forward to writing his novel in the beautiful landscape at Good Hart. He is also excited to meet and connect with members of the local community.