FARMINGTON — Gretchen Legler, University of Maine at Farmington professor of creative writing, was recently named a 2011 Fulbright Scholar to the Kingdom of Bhutan.

A tenured professor with the UMF bachelor of fine arts in creative writing program, Legler is one of two professionals to ever to receive a Fulbright Award to travel to the small Buddhist country in the eastern Himalaya mountains.

Selected through a competitive process based on academic merit and leadership potential, Legler has been awarded a nine-month Fulbright grant to teach and do research at Paro College of Education in western Bhutan.

The grant runs from October 2011 to early summer 2012, during which time Legler will teach college writing, creative writing and American literature. Established in 1975, Paro College of Education is part of the Royal University of Bhutan System that includes the country’s 11 public post-secondary schools.

An author and scholar, Legler has written “On the Ice: An Intimate Portrait of Life at McMurdo Station Alaska” (Milkweed Editions, 2005), winner of the award for environmental creative writing by the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment; and “All the Powerful Invisible Things: A Sportswoman’s Notebook” (Seal Press, 1995.) She was a visiting scholar at the Cambridge University Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge, England and a grantee of the National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs: Antarctic Artists and Writers Program Fellowship.

Legler received a Ph.D. in English from the University of Minnesota.