Writing Residency
Residency Archive - 2020
The Writing Residency will be held in Los Angeles, CA, on May 28 - June 6, 2020.
Please note: due to health concerns, the residency will not be held in person anymore. Please check back for more updates.
Speakers
Chris Abani
Chris Abani is an acclaimed novelist and poet. His most recent books are The Secret History of Las Vegas, The Face: A Memoirand Sanctificum. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the PEN/Hemingway Award, An Edgar Prize, A Ford USA Artists Fellowship, the PEN Beyond the Margins Award, a Prince Claus Award, the Hurston Wright Legacy Award, and a Lannan Literary Fellowship, among many honors. Born in Nigeria, he is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Board of Trustees Professor of English and Comparative Literary Studies at Northwestern University. He lives in Chicago. More at http://www.chrisabani.com
Kwame Dawes
Kwame Dawes has authored 36 books of poetry, fiction, criticism, and essays, including, most recently, Nebraska (UNP, 2019), Bivouac (Akashic Books, 2019), and City of Bones: A Testament (Northwestern, 2017). Speak from Here to There (Peepal Tree Press), co-written with Australian poet John Kinsella, appeared in 2016. He is Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner and Chancellor’s Professor of English at the University of Nebraska. He is also a faculty member in the Pacific MFA Program. He is Director of the African Poetry Book Fund and Artistic Director of the Calabash International Literary Festival. Dawes is a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.
Natashia Deón
Natashia Deón is a 2017 NAACP Image Award Nominee and author of the critically-acclaimed novel, Grace (Counterpoint Press), which was named a best book of 2016 by The New York Times, The Root, Kirkus Review, Book Riot, and Entropy Magazine, and has been featured in People Magazine, TIME Magazine, and Red Book. Grace won the 2017 American Library Association, Black Caucus Award for Best Debut Fiction. A practicing attorney, mother, and law professor, Deón is the recipient of a PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Fellowship and served as a 2017 U.S. Delegate to Armenia in partnership with the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program, for a reconciliation project involving Armenian and Turkish writers.
Ladan Osman
Ladan Osman is a Somali born artist whose work is a lyric and exegetic response to problems of race, gender, displacement, and colonialism. She is the author of Exiles of Eden (Coffee House Press) and The Kitchen-Dweller’s Testimony (2015), winner of a Sillerman First Book Prize. Her most recent collection Exiles of Eden, is a work of poetry, photos, and experimental text. Her work has appeared in Columbia Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Roar, Rumpus, among others. Osman’s writing has been translated into over 10 languages. She currently lives in Brooklyn.
Matthew Shenoda
Matthew Shenoda is a writer, professor, university administrator, and author and editor of several books. His poems and essays have appeared in a variety of newspapers, journals, radio programs and anthologies. His debut collection of poems, Somewhere Else (Coffee House Press), was named one of 2005's debut books of the year by Poets & Writers Magazine and was winner of a 2006 American Book Award. He is also the author of Seasons of Lotus, Seasons of Bone (BOA Editions Ltd.), editor of Duppy Conqueror: New & Selected Poems by Kwame Dawes, and most recently author of Tahrir Suite: Poems (TriQuarterly Books/Northwestern University Press), winner of the 2015 Arab American Book Award and with Kwame Dawes editor of Bearden’s Odyssey: Poets Respond to the Art of Romare Bearden (TriQuarterly Books/Northwestern University Press, 2017).
Anna Ghosh
Ghosh Literary is an independent literary agency founded by Anna Ghosh. Anna started her career as a literary agent in New York city in 1995 and was previously a partner at Scovil Galen Ghosh.The agency offers world wide literary representation for print and digital media and all allied rights, including motion picture, theatrical and multimedia rights. Anna’s client list includes New York Times bestsellers, winners of the Pulitzer Prize, Guggenheim and other awards, as well as unheralded gems. Her literary interests are wide and eclectic and she is known for discovering and developing writers. She is particularly interested in literary narratives and books that illuminate some aspect of human endeavor or the natural world. Anna does not typically represent genre fiction but is drawn to compelling storytelling in most guises. Anna studied Cultural Anthropology and Literary Journalism at Hampshire College, Massachusetts and Liberal Studies at The New School for Social Research, New York. Originally from India, Anna lived in New York city for 16 years and now lives in San Francisco, California.
Mahtem Shiferraw
Mahtem Shiferraw is a writer and visual artist from Ethiopia and Eritrea. Her work has been published in various literary journals, including Callaloo, Prairie Schooner, Poets.org, The 2River View, Luna Luna Magazine, Diverse Voices Quarterly, Numero Cinq, and more. She is the author of two poetry collections, Fuchsia, which won the Sillerman Prize for African Poets, and Your Body Is War, and the chapbook Behind Walls & Glass. She has served as a jury member for different literary prizes and 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. In 2018, she received the Imani Award for Artistic Excellence from Harvard University. She holds an MFA from Vermont College.