By Gigi Rosenberg
  When poet Mary Szybist received the call that she'd won $25,000 from the National Endowment from the Arts, "it was a gift of validation and helped me restore faith in my own work," she said from her home base in Portland, Oregon.
 
This was the second time Szybist, an assistant professor at Lewis and Clark College, had applied for the fellowship, which supports the creation of new work in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction.
 
Szybist will use her fellowship to finish h...