Meredith Kelling, assistant director of student engagement and research, received a grant from University Libraries’ Newman Exploration Travel Fund (NEXT) for research on a biography of the forgotten Midwestern writer and organizer Meridel Le Sueur. The grant program supports WashU students, faculty and staff travel as a means of expanding one’s horizons and inspiring growth, excellence and innovation while pursuing both personal and professional goals.

Kelling’s book project aims to restore Le Sueur’s legacy by drawing on her extensive archive of typewritten journals, correspondence and audio recordings to trace her connections with networks of writers, artists and activists working across movements for labor rights, racial justice and women's liberation. The grant supported archival research in summer 2026 in Minneapolis and Northern California, two sites where Le Sueur’s legacy lives on through her papers, descendants and community organizations.

Kelling, who initially wrote on Le Sueur as part of her dissertation project in the WashU Department of English, hopes the project will result in a biography of Le Sueur that brings her work to closer to newer, broader audiences.