Arwen Donahue


Disciplines: Literature – nonfiction
Disciplines: Literature – nonfiction
Based in Carlisle, KY
Residencies: 2025
Portrait by: Joanna Eldredge Morrissey

Arwen Donahue is a writer, artist, and cartoonist. Her illustrated memoir Landings chronicles a year on her family’s Kentucky farm, exploring the conflicts and symbioses between art and land stewardship. Her comics have been featured in The Field Guide to Graphic Literature, Literary Hub, Electric Literature, The Nib, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. In 2023, she was awarded the Cornish Fellowship from the Center for Cartoon Studies.

At MacDowell, Donahue finished 14 pages of artwork for her graphic memoir How I Met My Mother (working title). Excerpts from the memoir have appeared in Electric Literature (2023) and Literary Hub (2022), the latter of which was shortlisted for the 2022 Cartoonist Studio Prize.

Studios

Heyward

Arwen Donahue worked in the Heyward studio.

The Lodge Annex, a wing on the west side of what was then the men’s dormitory (The Lodge), was completed in 1926. Initially intended as an apartment for a caretaker, the space was soon repurposed as a live-in studio for writers. In recognition of a major endowment gift from the…

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