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 15 - 24, 2024, 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 August 31, 2023 (with the final application deadline on September 15, 2023). Please note: the priority deadline has been extended to September 20th, with the final deadline on September 30th. All applications submitted by September 20th will be eligible to receive fellowships.

Applications are reviewed by an anonymous admission board of peers, which rotates every year. Notifications will be sent out starting October 1, 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

Chen Chen

Chen Chen is the author of two books of poetry, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency (BOA Editions, 2022) and When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (BOA Editions, 2017), which was longlisted for the National Book Award and won the Thom Gunn Award, among other honors. His work appears in many publications, including Poetry and three editions of The Best American Poetry. He has received two Pushcart Prizes and fellowships from Kundiman, the National Endowment for the Arts, and United States Artists. He was the 2018-2022 Jacob Ziskind Poet-in-Residence at Brandeis University and currently teaches for the low-residency MFA programs at New England College and Stonecoast. He lives with his partner, Jeff Gilbert, and their pug, Mr. Rupert Giles. 

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.

Ingrid Rojas Contreras

Ingrid Rojas Contreras was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia. Her memoir, The Man Who Could Move Clouds, was a Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, and National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist. It was a a winner of a California Book Award. Her first novel Fruit of the Drunken Tree was the silver medal winner in First Fiction from the California Book Awards, and a New York Times editor's choice. Her essays and short stories have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, The Cut, Zyzzyva, and elsewhere. Rojas Contreras has received numerous awards and fellowships from Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, VONA, Hedgebrook, The Camargo Foundation, and the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture. She is a Visiting Writer at Saint Mary’s College. She lives in California.

Naomi Jackson

Naomi Jackson is author of The Star Side of Bird Hill, published by Penguin Press in June 2015. The Star Side of Bird Hill was nominated for an NAACP Image Award and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize, the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, and the International Dublin Literary Award. Star Side was named an Honor Book for Fiction by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. It was also selected for the American Booksellers Association’s Indies Introduce and Indies Next List programs. The book has been reviewed by The New York Times, The New Yorker, Kirkus Reviews, NPR.org and Entertainment Weekly, which called Star Side “a gem of a book.” Publishers Weekly named Jackson a Writer to Watch. Jackson studied fiction at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She traveled to South Africa on a Fulbright scholarship, where she received an M.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town. A graduate of Williams College, her work has appeared in literary journals and magazines in the United States and abroad, including The New York Times, Harper’s, The Washington Post, Poets & Writers, and Caribbean Beat. She is the recipient of residencies, grants, and fellowships from Bread Loaf, MacDowell Colony,  Camargo Foundation, the University of Pennsylvania’s Kelly Writers House, Hedgebrook, New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Freya Project. Jackson is Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Rutgers University-Newark. She was a 2021-2022 Scholar-in-Residence at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and served as  Writer-in-Residence at Queens College. She previously taught at the University of Iowa, University of Pennsylvania, City College of New York, and Oberlin College. Jackson was born and raised in Brooklyn by West Indian parents.

Anjali Singh

Anjali Singh started her career in publishing in 1996 as a literary scout. Formerly Editorial Director at Other Press, she has also worked as an editor at Simon & Schuster, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Vintage Books. She is best known for having championed Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis after stumbling across it on a visit to Paris. She has always been drawn to the thrill of discovering new writers and among the literary novelists whose careers she helped launch are Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Samantha Hunt, Preeta Samarasan and Saleem Haddad. As an agent she represents Bridgett Davis, author of the acclaimed memoir The World According to Fannie Davis: My Mother’s Life in the Detroit Numbers; Susan Abulhawa, bestselling author of Mornings in Jenin and Against the Loveless World; Nawaaz Ahmed, author of the debut novel Radiant Fugitives and Rachel Harper, author of The Other Mother. Her graphic novel list includes Rebecca Hall and Hugo Martinez’ Wake: The Hidden History of Women-led Slave Revolts and Gillian Goerz’ Shirley and Jamila Save Their Summer as well as forthcoming works by Deena Mohamed, Steenz, Salman Toor, Fouad Mezher and Tessa Hulls. She is on the lookout for character-driven fiction or non-fiction works that reflect an engagement with the world around us and graphic novels for all ages. She grew up between New Delhi and Alexandria, VA, graduated from Brown University and holds a diploma in French language and literature from the Sorbonne. She is a devoted New Yorker but still manages to spend a great deal of time in Rhode Island.