Creative writers everywhere value uninterrupted time to write in an inspiring place and 329 of them in 7 genres from across the US, Canada and 5 other countries applied to our new Writers in Residence program—a collaboration between Straw Dog Writers Guild and Edith Wharton’s The Mount in Lenox, MA.
As volunteer organizers, we were both delighted by the response and daunted by the task of choosing with care only nine winners. Thanks to the skill and ready willingness of volunteers and Straw Dog members, 17 readers took on the work of reading and scoring each anonymous entry on a predetermined scale. Based on the scores, a sub-group of readers, paying attention to originality of voice and quality of writing, read a smaller group of entries twice more and came up with the short list of 27 finalists. At this moment, we are reading and ranking those finalists and we will announce the nine winners in our mid-January newsletter.
The 2022 writing residencies are especially designated for writers at the beginning of their careers when they need support the most. The partnership will offer one-week residencies for nine writers during three weeks in March 2022, three writers per week. Residents will work at The Mount in Lenox, MA and lodge next door at Seven Hills Inn. Please consider submitting your work in the next round, for 2023, when the opportunity is announced.
All of this is made possible by our generous anonymous donor, who funded several years of residencies for Straw Dog Members at Patchwork Farm Retreat in Westhampton MA, and continues to honor us with her financial support; and by the commitment of The Mount’s staff, dedicated to honoring writers at all stages of their work. We are deeply grateful.
The finalists are:
Yasmine Ameli
Joy Baglio
Natalie Gerich Brabson
Jody Callahan
Fay Dillof
Elyse Durham
Alyson Mosquera Dutemple
Anna Laura Falvay’
Gabriella Gage
Zahra Hankir
Halle Hill
Allison Hutchcraft
Cheryl Isaac
Ella Jacobson
Nandi Levine
Liana Mack
Nafari Morris
Kathryn Petruccelli
Jessica Provenz
Levi Pulford
Lindsay Rockwell
Arya Samuelson
Cynthia Snow
Alice Turski
Sarah Wang
Dashaun Washington
Emma Wu
We will announce the nine winners in mid-January.
With warmest congratulations,
The Writers-in-Residence Selection Committee