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: 
July 8, 2025
Rolling Admissions: 
ignore
Application Deadline: 
July 8, 2025
Financial Aid?: 
no
Financial Aid Application Deadline: 
July 8, 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.

Maggie Nelson: Pathemata, Or, The Story of My Mouth

Caption: 

In this virtual event for the Brooklyn Rail’s New Social Environment series, Maggie Nelson reads from her book Pathemata, Or, The Story of My Mouth (Wave Books, 2025) and speaks about the norms around illness memoirs and her desire to confront pain head-on through writing in a conversation with Darcey Steinke. “The book ended up being about what’s beneath this kind of quest for care,” says Nelson.

Trust Exercise

“Their romance has started in earnest this summer, but the prologue took up the whole previous year,” writes Susan Choi in the beginning of her 2019 award-winning novel, Trust Exercise, in which two high school freshmen fall in love and experience an intense love affair until they return to their performing arts school the next fall. When other classmates and teachers get involved, the outlines of their burgeoning relationship begin to seem less clear as the realities and complexities of group social dynamics come into play. Write a personal essay that chronicles the subtle or dramatic shifts of a relationship you’ve had in which your dynamic with the other person encountered some sort of transformation when the setting or surroundings of your relationship changed. Did issues of power, control, or social expectations have an effect? What questions arise when considering performance of the self in private versus in public?

Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda on Exophony

Caption: 

In this Books Are Magic event, Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda reads from her English translation of Yoko Tawada’s essay collection Exophony: Voyages Outside the Mother Tongue (New Directions, 2025) and discusses Tawada’s defamiliarization of the Japanese and German languages in a conversation with fellow translator Susan Bernofsky.

Where Art Begins

6.26.25


In Zhang Yueran’s novel Women, Seated, translated from the Chinese by Jeremy Tiang and forthcoming in August from Riverhead Books, the protagonist Yu Ling works as a nanny for a wealthy couple and their young son in China, after initially taking on duties assisting in the art studio of her employer, Qin Wen. In a flashback, Yu Ling recalls a remark by Qin Wen about an artist she admires: “Do you know why Alice Neel liked drawing mothers and children so much? It’s because she abandoned her own child.” Compose a pair of short lyrical essays, one that originates from loss and one that begins with a thing achieved or acquired. You might start with your instinctive responses to personal losses and gains, whether physical or more abstract. Do your attendant essays mirror each other or diverge?

Hala Alyan: I’ll Tell You When I’m Home

Caption: 

In this Amanpour and Company interview, Palestinian American author Hala Alyan talks about how fragmentation influenced the form and subjects in her memoir, I’ll Tell You When I’m Home (Avid Reader Press, 2025), and about the importance of preserving memory, culture, and identity. Alyan’s book is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Melissa Febos: The Dry Season

Caption: 

In this AM Northwest interview with host Helen Raptis, author Melissa Febos speaks about her fourth memoir, The Dry Season: A Memoir of Pleasure in a Year Without Sex (Knopf, 2025), and what she learned from taking a step away from romantic relationships. Febos’s book is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Generational Storytelling

6.19.25

In award-winning Palestinian American poet and novelist Hala Alyan’s debut memoir, I’ll Tell You When I’m Home (Avid Reader Press, 2025), she explores themes of loss and exile in conjunction with her experience preparing for the arrival of a new baby through surrogacy after years of struggling with infertility and miscarriages. While looking forward to the birth of her daughter, Alyan reflects on her family’s history with immigration and her childhood moving around Kuwait, Jordan, Lebanon, the UAE, Texas, and Oklahoma, and examines the roles of heritage and matriarchal storytelling. Write a personal essay that looks to the role of storytelling in your own family and childhood. What stories were told to you by parents, aunts and uncles, grandparents, and elders in your community? How are these stories and myths connected to your cultural inheritance and your formation as a writer and storyteller?

MacDowell

MacDowell offers residencies of up to six weeks year-round to poets, fiction writers, creative nonfiction writers, and translators on 450 acres near Mt. Monadnock in Peterborough, New Hampshire. Residents are provided with a private studio and work space, as well as three daily chef-prepared meals and access to the James Baldwin Library. Stipends and travel reimbursement grants are available based on financial need.

Type: 
RESIDENCY
Ignore Event Date Field?: 
no
Event Date: 
March 1, 2026
Rolling Admissions: 
no
Application Deadline: 
September 10, 2025
Financial Aid?: 
yes
Financial Aid Application Deadline: 
September 10, 2025
Free Admission: 
yes
Contact Information: 

MacDowell, 100 High Street, Peterborough, NH 03458. (603) 924-3886, ext. 113. David Macy, Resident Director.

David Macy
Resident Director
Contact City: 
Peterborough
Contact State: 
NH
Contact Zip / Postal Code: 
03458
Country: 
US

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