Last week, a press release from Ogden City Arts, Culture and Events heralded that Angelika Brewer, Ogden’s poet laureate, was the recipient of a $50,000 fellowship from the Academy of American Poets.

“I was in shock because I barely made it through high school myself,” she told the Standard-Examiner. “I’m an entirely self-taught poet. To receive that fellowship really was all of my hard work paying off, I felt like. But I’m also so grateful for the generosity of the the Academy of American Poets and the Mellon Foundation to offer me this opportunity to represent Ogden on a national stage and also to bring some literary arts resources back into the community.”

In total, the Academy of American Poets awarded $50,000 fellowships to 22 poets laureate at local, municipal and state levels across the country.

“The fellowship is intended to give poet laureates that are doing work in their communities additional resources to be able to continue doing that work,” Brewer said.

Brewer said she already has a vision for what to do with her fellowship money.

“I have plans to, first, expand on my community project, which is called the Ogden Ar(t)chives Mailbox,” she said. “That is a drop point for people to submit their art, writing, anything that can fit into the mailbox. Then that will be historically archived…. What I would like to do, first, with that is to create a website — an additional, digital archive — so that the community can view the archives at any time. After that, they’ll be physically donated to the Union Station where they will be archived in the city records.”

She also intends to utilize some of the funds to help other local art entities.

“I’m working with Ogden Contemporary Arts and their Artist Factory program to try to generate circular funding for their organization and the work that they do in the community,” she said. “We’ll be putting together a book that features Artist Factory teachers, the things that Ogden Contemporary Arts does and then, also, the students in the program will have the opportunity to be professionally published with Glass Spider Publishing, a local publisher.”

Additionally, Brewer said the money has helped her get a few items that make it easier to conduct public appearances.

“I was able to get some much needed equipment to be able to continue literary events and performance events that I’m currently running, but have had to borrow equipment in the past,” she said. “Now I have my own equipment to make those events easier to run.”

Brewer said that she and the other 2024 recipients of the fellowship will be sent to Washington, D.C., by the Academy of American Poets to take part in the National Book Festival at the Library of Congress later this month.