Nicky Beer is the author of The Octopus Game (Carnegie Mellon UP, 2015) and The Diminishing House (Carnegie Mellon UP, 2010), winner of the 2010 Colorado Book Award for Poetry. Her awards include a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Ruth Lilly Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation. She is an assistant professor at the University of Colorado Denver, where she also co-edits the literary journal Copper Nickel. 

The Mary Wood Fellowship at The Rose O’Neill Literary House is awarded biennially to an emerging female writer—in poetry, fiction, or creative nonfiction—who has published one book. The Fellowship enables female creative writing students at Washington College to work with and learn from successful female writers like Shara Lessley, Laura van den Berg, Hannah Tinti, and Irina Reyn, who spend five days on campus. Eastern Shore author Mary Wood, whose support makes the fellowship possible, is a ’68 graduate of the College and a former member of its Board of Visitors and Governors.