Genre: Creative Nonfiction

Vermont Studio Center

The Vermont Studio Center offers two-, three-, and four-week residencies year-round to poets, fiction writers, creative nonfiction writers, and translators in Johnson, Vermont, a village located in the heart of the northern Green Mountains. Residents are provided with time and space to write, as well as readings, craft talks, and one-on-one manuscript consultations with invited visiting writers. Residents receive a private room, a private studio, and meals. The cost of the residency is $2,700 for a two-week stay, $3,825 for a three-week stay, and $4,950 for a four-week stay.

Type: 
RESIDENCY
Ignore Event Date Field?: 
yes
Event Date: 
April 8, 2025
Rolling Admissions: 
no
Application Deadline: 
March 31, 2025
Financial Aid?: 
yes
Financial Aid Application Deadline: 
March 31, 2025
Free Admission: 
no
Contact Information: 

Vermont Studio Center, 80 Pearl Street, P.O. Box 613, Johnson, VT 05656. (802) 635-2727.

Contact City: 
Johnson
Contact State: 
VT
Contact Zip / Postal Code: 
05656
Country: 
US
Add Image: 
A large red building with a gray roof next to a river.

Palestinian Writing From the Diaspora: Susan Muaddi Darraj

Caption: 

In this episode of the Ehkili podcast, Sahar Mustafah talks to author and editor Susan Muaddi Darraj to discuss her anthology, Ask the Night for a Dream: Palestinian Writing From the Diaspora (Palestine Writes Press, 2024), and the significance of amplifying Palestinian literary voices.

Roxane Gay: The Portable Feminist Reader

Caption: 

In this interview for The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, Roxane Gay talks about how the word feminism has been defined through the centuries, the work included in her new anthology, The Portable Feminist Reader (Penguin Classics, 2025), and writing a romance novel with Channing Tatum.

Library of Muses

Among the thousands of structures that were destroyed in the devastating Los Angeles wildfires earlier this year was one home in Altadena. The house had been slated for renovations to become a foundation and residency honoring the late author and critic Gary Indiana, who died in October 2024. A shipment of hundreds of books constituting the writer’s personal library arrived at the home hours before the Eaton Fire, the entirety of which is now lost. Along with the library was an irreplaceable record of the authors who inspired Indiana’s work. In an act of reparative imagination, write a personal essay about a literary hero of yours and reflect on what might drive their creativity. If there are interviews and other materials available in which your subject reveals their muses, allow yourself the freedom to focus on your own speculations and connections.

Sarah M. Broom and Tracy K. Smith at the New Orleans Book Festival

Caption: 

In this New Orleans Book Festival event hosted at Tulane University, authors Sarah M. Broom and Tracy K. Smith speak about the origins of their writing practices, the cultural impact of their respective literary works, and the power of storytelling to reach the truth in a conversation with Vann R. Newkirk II, senior editor at the Atlantic.

Zadie Smith on Wild Card

Caption: 

In this episode of NPR’s Wild Card podcast hosted by Rachel Martin, author Zadie Smith reflects on the twenty-fifth anniversary of her debut novel, White Teeth (Random House, 2000), and talks about her forthcoming book of essays and her generation’s struggle with the notion of time. “I’ve always felt there wasn’t enough time. I would like to accept time and also love it,” she says.

Forty-Eight Hours

3.27.25

Directed Boris Lojkine, the award-winning French drama film Souleymane’s Story follows a young immigrant from Guinea who prepares for his interview to seek asylum refugee status in Paris. In the harrowing forty-eight hours prior to his interview, Souleymane careens through the streets as a bike courier for a food delivery app account he rents for a hefty fee from a fellow immigrant, tries to memorize falsified stories about political imprisonment another immigrant coaches him on for a fee, and rushes to find a bed each night in a homeless shelter. Write a personal essay that recounts a momentous event from your life and begins forty-eight hours before the climactic scene. Try playing with focused descriptions of your surroundings and the style of your prose to reflect the pacing and dramatic moments of your story.

Pattis Family Foundation Creative Arts Book Award

Interlochen Center for the Arts
Entry Fee: 
$0
Deadline: 
May 1, 2025

A prize of $25,000 and a two- to three-day residency at Interlochen Center for the Arts in Interlochen, Michigan, is given annually for a book of fiction or nonfiction published

Breaking Boundaries

3.20.25

How much creative work do you do in a day? When Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei was asked this question for the New York Times Style Magazine’s Artist’s Questionnaire series, he said, “My work is trying to break the boundary of what is normally called ‘creative.’ I avoid trying to be creative. I try to push myself into normal life and bring the integrity of a normal life into the so-called art world.” Take inspiration from the idea of breaking down these boundaries and consider all the different ways your creative identity potentially bleeds over into your daily tasks and vice versa. Write a personal essay that begins with an exploration of how your relationship to language, craft, or aesthetics has affected your general outlook. Then expand on how this artistic perspective manifests in your day-to-day habits, actions, and interactions.

Five Years Later

3.13.25

On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. Five years later, it may all feel like a distant dream (or nightmare) or completely forgotten, but there’s no denying that the pandemic created irrevocable changes in our world, both big and small. Write a personal essay that reflects on how your life has transformed in the last five years. You might trace certain hopes, fears, or expectations as they evolved over the course of each year and consider where you are today. What have been the biggest shifts in your mindset regarding relationships with family and friends, socializing, health, finances, and travel?

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