Genre: Fiction

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: 
July 10, 2025
Rolling Admissions: 
ignore
Application Deadline: 
July 10, 2025
Financial Aid?: 
no
Financial Aid Application Deadline: 
July 10, 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.

Neuro-plasticky

Neuroplasticity refers to the ability of the brain to adapt, grow, and evolve throughout our lives by forming new neural connections. But what about actual plastics in the brain? While past studies have presented findings that our bodies are increasingly becoming filled with microplastics, more recent research has shown that a significant amount of these plastics are accumulating in the brain—possibly an average of an entire spoon’s worth. This week write a short story that postulates on the effects of this biological issue. The premise may lend itself naturally to a dystopian, apocalyptic story of sci-fi horror, but are there other elements and genres that you can experiment with, such as satire, romance, or mystery?

Sarah Yahm: Unfinished Acts of Wild Creation

Caption: 

In this Foreword Reviews interview from their Petit Forward series, Sarah Yahm fields questions about the characters in her debut novel, Unfinished Acts of Wild Creation (Dzanc Books, 2025). Yahm is featured in “First Fiction 2025” in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

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Money, Money, Money

Written and directed by Celine Song, Materialists is a film about a matchmaker at a high-end agency in New York City and her own trials of love. She interviews and maneuvers her clients who have very specific demands for their potential dating partners, testing the mechanics of worth and value, and seeing people through the lens of market capitalism. Characters are bluntly forthcoming about age preferences and job salaries, an honesty that may seem surprising when considered against old-fashioned social norms which deem it vulgar to talk about money. Write a story in which one of your characters is uncommonly direct about financial matters—whether about having a lot or a little, or how much they spend, earn, and save. How does bringing money into the picture illuminate issues of class between your characters?

Sing the Truth: Laura Pegram, Edwidge Danticat, and Princess Joy L. Perry

Caption: 

Laura Pegram, Edwidge Danticat, and Princess Joy L. Perry discuss the making of the anthology Sing the Truth: The Kweli Journal Short Story Collection (Authors Equity, 2025) and talk about the importance of finding and nurturing emerging writers of color in this live episode of Poured Over: The Barnes & Noble Podcast hosted by Miwa Messer. Read more about the anthology in “The Anthologist” in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

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Irene Solà: I Gave You Eyes and You Looked Toward Darkness

Caption: 

In this Green Apple Books event, Irene Solà celebrates the English language release of her third novel, I Gave You Eyes and You Looked Toward Darkness (Graywolf Press, 2025), translated from the Catalan by Mara Faye Lethem, with a reading and discussion with author Shruti Swamy. Solà’s novel is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

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All So Different

6.25.25

“It was all so different than he expected. / For years he’d been agnostic; now he meditated. / For years he’d dreamed of being an artist living abroad; / now he reread Baudelaire, Emerson, Bishop. / He’d never considered marriage … / Still, a force through the green fuse did drive.” So begins Henri Cole’s poem “At Sixty-Five,” which appears in The Other Love, forthcoming in July from Farrar, Straus and Giroux, a collection in which Cole reflects on the shifting observations of a person as they age and gain new perspective on the passing of time and the accumulation of memories. Write a short story from the point of view of someone older than you, which begins with the sentence “It was all so different than I expected.” Is your inclination to plot out key milestones in your character’s life before you begin writing or to simply see where the character’s meditations take you?

City Lights Live: Jon Hickey

Caption: 

In this virtual City Lights Live event, Jon Hickey reads from and talks about his debut novel, Big Chief (Simon & Schuster, 2025), in a conversation with author Tomas Moniz. Hickey is featured in “First Fiction 2025” in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

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