Very happy to report that today I received a residency from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts!
So excited to get away in the spring and focus on the revisions of the novel I've been working on and will have completed by then. I went to grad school in Virginia (Hollins University), so I know that time of year is lovely there, and it's a great time for me, personally. There's still the austere beauty of winter giving way to the light gold and green flush of spring. That boundary is a special place.
I will definitely be posting, including pics and videos during my time there to share the experience!
Here's a video made by one of the fellows there to show you a bit of the place:
And here's some info on VCCA if you're interested in applying:
The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA), is one of the foremost international working retreats for writers, visual artists and composers located in the foothills of Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains, providing meals, rooms and studios to selected professional artists from around the world. The VCCA hosts about 350 "Fellows" each year (25 at any one time) at its Mt. San Angelo estate adjacent to Sweet Briar College. In this bucolic setting, the VCCA provides residential fellowships of two weeks to two months where artists may work free from the distractions and responsibilities of daily life.
Over its 37-year history, the VCCA has served more than 4,000 visual artists, writers, composers and other genre individuals, adding in immeasurable quantity and quality to the literature, visual arts and musical resources available to all the world's citizens. Fellows have received major awards including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Grammy Award and Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellowships. Fellows have included social commentator and best-selling author of The Beauty Myth Naomi Wolf; novelist Gregory Maguire, whose novel Wicked became a record-breaking, smash-hit Broadway play; and Pulitzer Prize winning composer David Del Tredici. Fellows come to the VCCA from every U.S. state and more than 50 countries.
Admission to the VCCA is highly selective, based on a review of applications by panels of professional artists in each discipline. The basis for admission by an application is professional achievement or promise of achievement. To apply, artists submit an application form, curriculum vitae and samples of their work. Deadlines: January 15 for residencies between June and September; May 15 for residencies between October and January; and September 15 for residencies between February and May.
