Writing Residencies - Apply, Apply, Apply

By Mindy Lawrence

A writer I know decided to stick her neck out and apply for an international writing residency. Guess what? She was accepted! She got to go to Iceland and participate in a program for memoir and nonfiction writers. She’s getting to go for one reason—she applied.

It’s important to grow. We do that by pushing past what we think we CAN do and exploring the murky ground of the unknown. When we succeed, it gives us the motivation we need to investigate our abilities even deeper.  You might want to investigate some of the residencies mentioned in the links below and see if you are interested. By all means, look at them and apply, apply, apply.

LINKS

·         Nine Unconventional Writers’ Residencies: https://electricliterature.com/nine-unconventional-writers-residencies/

·         Conferences and Residencies Database: https://www.pw.org/conferences_and_residencies

·         Artist Communities Residencies: http://www.artistcommunities.org/residencies/directory

·         12 Offbeat Writer Residency Programs: https://mediablog.prnewswire.com/2016/10/06/offbeat-writer-residency-programs/

·         Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow: https://www.writerscolony.org/

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 Original first published in Sharing with Writers.

Mindy Lawrence is a writer and artist based in Farmington, Missouri. She worked for the State of Missouri for over 24 years and has retired to her sumptuous home office where she’s writing and doing calligraphy. She proofed and wrote a column for Sharing with Writers newsletter by Carolyn Howard-Johnson for ten years. 


5 comments:

Terry Whalin said...

Mindy,

Thank you for this interesting post on writing residencies. I've never had one of these opportunities--and of course I've never tried so your encouragement to apply makes perfect sense and hopefully will help many people.

Terry

Karen Cioffi said...

Mindy, thanks for sharing. I also never had the opportunity to go for a writing residency, but I'm sure it'd be a very helpful experience!

deborah lyn said...

Thank you Mindy. I've never taken part in this kind of opportunity, but, OH a residency would be great! Thank you for the tips and resources.

lastpg said...

Thank you for your interesting post, Mindy. I am going to check these residencies out!

Carolyn Howard-Johnson said...

Mindy, you probably remember when my former UCLA writing instructor Eve Caram and I sponsored a #writersretreat in Rome. It was the experience of our writing lives apart from our holding our published novels in our hands. We just leased a villa and let our associates know about it. It worked like your advice. My mom used to say, “you’ll never know if you can do it if you don’t try!” It’s lovely to be working alongside you again!
Hugs,
Carolyn Howard-Johnson

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