Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing Summer Writers’ Conference

The 2021 Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing Summer Writers’ Conference was held from June 6 to June 12 and from June 13 to June 19 at the Vineyard Arts Project (VAP) campus in downtown Edgartown on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. The conference featured weeklong seminars with daily workshops in poetry and fiction, as well as manuscript consultations, panel discussions, and readings. The faculty included poets Amelia Martens, Adrian Matejka, Elizabeth Schmuhl, Britton Shurley, and Keith Taylor; and fiction writers Tia Clark, John T. Howard, Wendy Rawlings, Samrat Upadhyay, and Alexander Weinstein. Tuition was $1,075 per week. Lodging was available at the VAP campus for $625 to $975. General registration was first come, first served. To apply for financial aid, writers submitted three poems or 10 pages of prose and a letter of interest with a $25 application fee by May 1.

The conference also offered full fellowships (valued at $1,700 each), which included full tuition and lodging, and partial fellowships, which included a $500 tuition waiver, to writers with children who are 16 or younger, writers of color, educators, and queer writers; the application deadline was January 25 for parents, February 1 for writers of color, February 15 for educators, and March 1 for queer writers. Two full and two partial fellowships were given to poets and prose writers as part of the MVICW annual writing contest; the submission deadline was March 15. For both the fellowships and the writing contest, writers submitted a poem of up to three pages or a story, essay, or excerpt of a novel or memoir of no more than 3,000 words with a $25 application fee; fellowship applications also required a letter of interest. Visit the website for more information.