Dawn Burns, writer, professor, collector of Beautiful Things, and creative community organizer, founded SwampFire when she opened her family's country home in Indiana on 5-6 July 2008 to a visual artist and two poets. Since then, Dawn has had the pleasure to co-organize with Mary Catherine Harper and to work with potter Steve Smith who has hosted SwampFire at his Angola, Indiana, studio since 2011.
Dawn was the recipient of an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award in Fiction and has twice received the Paul Somers Prize for Creative Prose from the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature. Her book Evangelina Everyday tells the story of Evangelina McQuarry, an Indiana housewife who may appear simple and uncomplicated, but whose rich inner life is revealed as she prays for Downton Abbey characters, watches cockroaches, thinks about teeth, and ponders the worth of her unhappy life in hopes that it might one day change.
Her writing has appeared in such publications as Women Under Scrutiny: An Anthology of Truths, Essays, Poems, Stories and Art; Gemini Magazine; The Offbeat; and MidAmerica.
She is currently working on Dawn at Dawn: Sunrise Reflections, bringing together five years of sunrise photography and written reflections from life at Indiana’s Lake Wawasee.
Dawn is an assistant professor in Michigan State University’s Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures department where she teaches in the First Year Writing program. In Lansing, she works with colleagues and the Everybody Reads bookstore to host readings and open mics which welcome all.
To find out more, visit dawnburns42.com.
Top left photo: Dawn looking at her favorite Thorne Miniature Room, "California Hallway, c. 1940," in the Chicago Institute of Art
Main photo:
Dawn relaxing just before a reading and discussion session at SwampFire 2012
A photo Dawn took in 2018 . . . dragonflies gather as we do at SwampFire.
Dawn's designs on two cups, created at SwampFire 2016
SwampFire supports the work of artists and writers and