Genre: Creative Nonfiction

Sitka Center for Art and Ecology Writing Residencies

The Sitka Center for Art and Ecology will offer two- to twelve-week residencies from October 2025 to April 2026 to poets, fiction writers, nonfiction writers, and translators at the center’s adjacent 80-acre property, located within the unique ecosystems of Cascade Head and the Salmon River Estuary in Otis, Oregon. Each resident is provided with a private room, bathroom, and kitchen in a house, as well as private studio space and access to the Hale Reference Library. Residents are responsible for travel and living costs.

Type: 
RESIDENCY
Ignore Event Date Field?: 
no
Event Date: 
October 1, 2025
Rolling Admissions: 
no
Application Deadline: 
March 14, 2025
Financial Aid?: 
no
Financial Aid Application Deadline: 
March 11, 2025
Free Admission: 
no
Contact Information: 

Sitka Center for Art and Ecology Writing Residencies, 56605 Sitka Drive, Otis, OR 97368. (541) 994-5485. Maria Elting, Program Manager. 

Maria Elting
Program Manager
Contact City: 
Otis
Contact State: 
OR
Contact Zip / Postal Code: 
97368
Country: 
US

You’re the Inspiration

2.13.25

In a recent New York Times Magazine interview, Dr. Anna Lembke, a Stanford psychiatrist who studies a variety of addictions from substance abuse to social media, talks about her speculative theory about contemporary society and narcissism. “Our culture is demanding that we focus on ourselves so much that what it’s creating is this deep need to escape ourselves,” she says. Take a break from self-actualization and write an essay that focuses on a close friend or loved one to create a lyrical profile of sorts. If you instinctively relate your observations and memories back to yourself, correct course and try to place the focus as much as possible on someone else. What emerges as a result?

Message of Love

Written around 2000 BCE in ancient Mesopotamia, “The Love Song of Shu-Sin” holds the record as the oldest known love poem. Forty centuries later, love poetry continues to be written, in times of joy and sorrow, for all different types of occasions in as many different styles as there are writers. Choose a favorite love poem and spend some time considering the people and things you’ve loved. Write a personal essay that reflects on the elements of the poem that most deeply resonate with you, whether it be the diction, imagery, or sentiments expressed. In what ways does this poem remind you of meaningful relationships in your life? How do these words reflect a message about love?

Lee Hawkins

Caption: 

“This book is not about blame, it’s about understanding.” In this Enoch Pratt Free Library event in Baltimore, Lee Hawkins speaks about the history and research he encountered in the writing process of his debut memoir, I Am Nobody’s Slave: How Uncovering My Family’s History Set Me Free (Amistad, 2025). Hawkins’s memoir is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Severance

1.30.25

The science fiction thriller television series Severance, created by Dan Erickson, is centered around a group of characters who work on a classified project at a corporation and undergo a “severance” procedure, in which their nine-to-five workday selves have compartmentalized memories, separate from their outside-world selves, in effect creating two entirely differentiated lived experiences. In the pilot episode, it’s revealed that the main character Mark underwent the procedure after he lost his wife to a car accident, and in his grief was unable to continue with his job as a college history professor. Write a nonfiction piece that explores this idea of severance, speculating on a certain portion or element of your life that you would consider “severing” from your day-to-day consciousness. Though there might be gains, would they outweigh the losses?

Pico Iyer on Learning From Silence

Caption: 

In this episode of the Keep Talking Podcast, Pico Iyer talks about losing his home in the 1990 Painted Cave fire in Santa Barbara, his experiences with silence, and his new book, Aflame: Learning From Silence (Riverhead Books, 2025), which is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Arts & Letters

Arts & Letters Prizes
Entry Fee: 
$20
Deadline: 
February 20, 2025

Three prizes of $1,000 each and online publication in Arts & Letters are given annually for a group of poems, a short story, and an essay.

Pages

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