Writing Residency

About

Anaphora Writing Residency is a ten-day program designed exclusively for writers of color. The residency offers workshops, readings, craft talks, and discussions with professionals from the literary and publishing industry. The goal of the program is to nurture emerging and established writers of color, to create opportunities for publication, and establish a wide network of support for writers of different backgrounds.

Dates & Fees

The upcoming residency will run on February 13 - 22, 2025 and will be held virtually. The program costs $2,800, and several partial fellowships are available every year, depending on funding availability. Applications must be submitted by the priority deadline to be eligible for fellowships. Anaphora Fellows and returning alumnx, will have the opportunity to attend the program at a discounted rate.

Applications are now open! Please note: applications will continue to be accepted until spots are filled.

Applications are reviewed by an anonymous admission board of peers, which rotates every year. Notifications will be sent out starting October 25th (including notifications of fellowships). A non-refundable security deposit of $300 is required within two weeks of notification; program fees must be paid entirely prior to the beginning of the residency.

If you have any questions, please check out the residency’s FAQ page, or contact us.

What to Expect

The program will provide workshops in poetry and prose, craft talks, daily readings (by guests and program participants), masterclasses, generative sessions, and discussions with professionals from the industry, including literary agents, editors, and publishers.

Speakers

Chris Abani

Chris Abani’s books of fiction include The Secret History of Las Vegas, Song For Night, The Virgin of Flames, Becoming Abigail, Graceland, and Masters of the Board. His poetry collections are Smoking the Bible, Sanctificum, There Are No Names for Red, Feed Me The Sun: Collected Long Poems, Hands Washing Water, Dog Woman, Daphne’s Lot, and Kalakuta Republic. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the PEN/Hemingway Award, the PEN Beyond the Margins Award, the Hurston Wright Award, and a Lannan Literary Fellowship, among many honors. His work has been translated into French, Italian, Spanish, German, Swedish, Romanian, Hebrew, Macedonian, Ukrainian, Portuguese, Dutch, Bosnian, and Serbian.

Jamaica Baldwin

Jamaica (she/her) is a poet and educator originally from Santa Cruz, CA. Her first book, Bone Language, was published by YesYes Books in June 2023. Her work has appeared in Guernica, World Literature Today, The Adroit Journal, Prairie Schooner, Poetry Northwest, and The Missouri Review, among others. Her accolades include a 2023 Pushcart Prize, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a RHINO Poetry editor's prize, a Glenna Luschei Prairie Schooner Award, as well as the San Miguel de Allende Writer's Conference Contest Poetry Award. Jamaica has also served as a community based teaching artist with Writers in the Schools - Seattle, Louder Than a Bomb - Great Plains (an affiliate of Nebraska Writers Collective), and taught a generative writing workshop for women in Guatemala. Her writing has been supported by Aspen Words, Storyknife, Hedgebrook, Furious Flower, and the Jack Straw Writers program. Jamaica has a PhD from the University of Nebraska -Lincoln in English with a focus on poetry and Women's and Gender Studies and she is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Writing at Ithaca College in New York.

Samiya Bashir

Samiya Bashir is a prolific poet, artist, writer, performer, educator, and advocate. She is the author of three poetry collections, most recently Field Theories (Nightboat, 2017), winner of the 2018 Oregon Book Awards Stafford/Hall Award for Poetry. Her other books of poetry are Gospel (Redbone Press, 2009), and Where the Apple Falls (Redbone Press, 2005). Her next book, I Hope this Helps, is forthcoming in Spring 2025 from Nightboat Books. She is the editor of Black Women’s Erotica and co-editor of Roll Call: A Generational Anthology of Social & Political Black Literature & Art, with Tony Medina and Quraysh Ali Lansana. She has collaborated with visual and media artists on numerous projects, including the limited-edition artists’ book, Hades D.W.P., with artists Alison Saar and Tracy Schlapp. Her work has also been included in numerous anthologies including There's A Revolution Outside, My Love: Letters from a Crisis edited by Tracy K. Smith and John Freeman, and Queer Nature: A Poetry Anthology, edited by Michael Walsh. Her most recent multi-media project is “I Hope this Helps” at the Africa Center in Harlem, a multi-sensory exhibition exploring critical issues impacting and reflecting the human condition. Samiya’s honors include the Rome Prize in Literature, the Pushcart Prize, Oregon’s Arts & Culture Council Individual Artist Fellowship in Literature, plus numerous other awards, grants, fellowships, and residencies including MacDowell, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and the New York Council on the Arts. In addition to her books, Samiya has served as editor to national magazines and anthologies of literature and artwork. In 2002 she was co-founder of Fire & Ink, an advocacy organization and writer’s festival for LGBT writers of African descent with whom she worked through 2015. In addition to her books, Samiya has served as editor to national magazines and anthologies of literature and artwork. Samiya earned a BA from the University of California, Berkeley, and an MFA from the University of Michigan. Formerly an associate professor at Reed College, she currently serves as the June Jordan Visiting Scholar at Columbia University. She lives in Harlem.

Bushra Rehman

Rehman’s dark comedy, Corona, was chosen by the NY Public Library as one of its favorite books  about NYC. She is co-editor of Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism and author of the collection of poetry Marianna’s Beauty Salon, described by Joseph O. Legaspi as “a love poem for Muslim girls, Queens, and immigrants making sense of their foreign home–and surviving.” Her new novel, Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion, is a modern classic about what it means to be Muslim and queer in a Pakistani-American community was chosen as a Best Book and Editor’s Choice by The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, People Magazine, Good Morning America, Goodreads,  The Chicago Review, BuzzFeed, Lit Hub, Lambda Literary, BookRiot, PopSugar, The AV Club, E! News, Ms. Magazine and more.

Mahtem Shiferraw

Mahtem Shiferraw is a writer and visual artist from Ethiopia and Eritrea. Her work has been published in various literary magazines, including Callaloo, Prairie Schooner, Poets.org, The 2River View, Luna Luna Magazine, Diverse Voices Quarterly, Numero Cinq, and more. Her short story The River received an honorable mention from Glimmer Train’s Open Fiction Contest. She is the author of three full-length poetry collections; Fuchsia (University of Nebraska Press, 2016) which won the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets; Your Body Is War (University of Nebraska Press, 2019) and Nomenclatures of Invisibility (BOA Editions Ltd., 2023). She is also the author of the chapbook collection BEHIND WALLS & GLASS (Finishing Line Press, 2015). She has served as an editor, curator or advisor for different literary journals. She has served as a jury member for different literary prizes and artist residencies, including the Neudstat International Prize for Literature, the Brunel International African Poetry Prize, the Lucy Munro Brooker Prize, and more. She is a Pushcart prize nominee, and her work has been anthologized widely. She also served on the editorial board of World Literature Today, where she curated the Black Voices Series (2020, 2021) and the New African Voices portfolio. She holds an MFA from Vermont College.

Samantha Fabien

Samantha Fabien (she/her) is a literary agent at Root Literary. Before joining the Root team, Samantha worked at Laura Dail Literary Agency as a literary agent and International Rights Manager. Her background includes a Bachelor’s in PR and Journalism, a certificate from the Columbia Publishing Course, and internships/part-time work at Ayesha Pande Literary, Writers House, and Chalberg & Sussman. From these experiences, Samantha has fostered her love for sharing diverse, lasting, and inclusive stories with the world – both in the U.S. and abroad. Samantha can also be found working with events and organizations like DVcon, #Edits4BlackSFF, Gotham Writers, and the New York Writing Room among others. For more information, you can visit her website: www.samanthafabien.com or follow her on social media as @samanthashnh on Instagram and Twitter.