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 August 10 - 19, 2023, and will be held virtually. The program costs $2,400, 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! The priority deadline is April 15, 2023 (with the final application deadline on April 30, 2023). Please note: the deadline for applications has been extended to May 7th!

Applications are reviewed by an anonymous admission board of peers, which rotates every year. Notifications will be sent out starting May 5, 2023 (including notifications of fellowships). A non-refundable security deposit of $150 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.

Akil Kumarasamy

Akil Kumarasamy is the author of the novel, Meet Us by the Roaring Sea (FSG, 2022), and the linked story collection, Half Gods (FSG, 2018), which was named a New York Times Editors’ Choice, was awarded the Bard Fiction Prize and the Story Prize Spotlight Award, and was a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize. Her work has appeared in Harper’s Magazine, The Atlantic, American Short Fiction, BOMB, among others. She has received fellowships from the University of East Anglia, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Yaddo, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. She is an assistant professor in the Rutgers University-Newark MFA program.

Marilyn Nelson

Marilyn Nelson is the author or translator of some twenty poetry books and chapbooks for adults, young adults, and children. Many of her collections have won awards, and her poems have been widely anthologized. Nelson’s honors include two NEA creative writing fellowships, the 1990 Connecticut Arts Award, a Fulbright Teaching Fellowship (in the South of France!), a fellowship from the J.S. Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Ruth Lilly Award, the Robert Frost Medal, and the Wallace Stevens Award. She has served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, as Poet-in-Residence of the Poets Corner at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and as the Poet Laureate of the State of Connecticut. The mother of two and grandmother of two, she lives quietly, retired from a long career in academia, with her daughter and three cats.

Ruben Quesada

Ruben Quesada is the editor of a hybrid collection, Latinx Poetics: Essays on the Art of Poetry (2022). He is the author of Jane: La Segua (2023), Revelations (2018), and Next Extinct Mammal: Poems (2011). His writing appears in The New York Times, Best American Poetry, American Poetry Review, Kirkus, and Harvard Review. He has received fellowships and grants from Canto Mundo, Lambda Literary Foundation, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts,  Vermont Studio Center, and the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events at the City of Chicago. He serves on the National Book Critics Circle board and is the 2022 chair for the award in nonfiction. He is an Associate Fellow at the Attic Institute of Arts and Letters. He teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Antioch University-Los Angeles and for the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program.

Matthew Shenoda

Matthew Shenoda is the author of several books, including Tahrir Suite: Poems, winner of the 2015 Arab American Book Award; and, most recently, The Way of the Earth. He is the editor, with Kwame Dawes, of Bearden’s Odyssey: Poets Respond to the Art of Romare Bearden, and a founding editor of the African Poetry Book Fund. Shenoda is currently Professor and Chair of the Department of Literary Arts at Brown University.

Nafissa Thompson-Spires

Born and raised in Southern California, Nafissa Thompson-Spires earned a PhD in English from Vanderbilt University and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of Illinois. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The White Review, Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly, StoryQuarterly, Lunch Ticket, and The Feminist Wire, among other publications. She is a 2016 participant of the CallalooWriter’s Workshop, a 2017 Tin House workshopee, and a 2017 Sewanee Writer's Conference Stanley Elkin Scholar. Her short story collection, Heads of the Colored People, is forthcoming in April with Simon and Schuster’s Atria/ 37 Ink imprints and later in the UK from Penguin Random House’s Chatto and Windus imprint. Her debut novel is under contract with the same publishers.

Saba Sulaiman

Saba Sulaiman was born to Pakistani immigrants in Sri Lanka. She studied Economics and Middle Eastern Studies at Wellesley College, and modern Persian Literature at the University of Chicago, where she helped edit the department's Center for Middle Eastern Studies's academic journal. After a stint at Sourcebooks as an editorial intern, she joined the Talcott Notch Literary Services. She believes that being an author is an entrepreneurial endeavor, and she sees her role as her clients’ primary advocate as they navigate each and every stage of the publishing process. She is also committed to highlighting marginalized voices with bright careers ahead of them, and compelling stories to tell; stories that demonstrate the true range of perspectives that exist in this world, and address urgent and often underexplored issues with veracity and heart. She is also proud to be on the steering committee for People of Color in Publishing, a grassroots organization working to serve the interests of publishing professionals of color.