Tag: safta

DEVELOPMENT DIRECTORSHIP FOR SUNDRESS ACADEMY FOR THE ARTS

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An extension of Sundress Publications, a 501(c)3 nonprofit publication group founded in 2000, the Sundress Academy for the Arts (SAFTA) is an artists’ residency on a 45-acre farm in Knoxville, Tennessee, that offers residencies to writers in all genres including literary, nonfiction, journalism, and academic. With two residency rooms and a dry cabin on site, we offer a rotating space for nationally recognized and emerging artists in multiple disciplines. SAFTA also hosts weekend workshops, a reading series, and yearly retreats.

This position will run for one year from your start date with a chance to be renewed the following year. The development director’s responsibilities includes working with a team of interns and other directors to research grant opportunities, draft potential grants, coordinate between SAFTA department heads, work with our budget office, and lead a team of two to four people to write, edit, and submit national, regional, and local grants.

Qualifications include:

  • Strong organizational, creative problem-solving, and written communication skills
  • Familiarity with online research
  • A keen eye for grammar, punctuation, and syntax
  • A passion for contemporary literature and community arts programs

Previous experience with arts administration and/or grant writing is greatly preferred. Applicants are welcome to telecommunicate and therefore are not restricted to living in the Knoxville area.

While this is an unpaid position, all directorships with SAFTA gain real-world experience with a nationally recognized press and arts organization while creating a portfolio of work for future employment opportunities. Directors will also be able to attend all workshops at the Sundress Academy for the Arts for free.

To apply, please send a resume and a brief cover letter detailing your interest in the position to Erin Elizabeth Smith at erin@sundresspublications.com Applications are due by August 15, 2019.

For more information, visit us at www.sundresspublications.com and www.sundressacademyforthearts.com. You may also check us out on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more.

SUNDRESS ACADEMY FOR THE ARTS NOW ACCEPTING FALL RESIDENCY APPLICATIONS FOR WRITERS COOP

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The Sundress Academy for the Academy for the Arts (SAFTA) is now accepting applications for short-term writers residencies during the fall residency period for our Writers Coop. These residencies are designed to give writers and artists time and space to complete their creative projects in a quiet and productive environment.

Open weeks for the summer and fall include August 19 – December 29, 2019. Residency weeks run from Monday to Sunday.

coop3.jpgSAFTA is located on a working farm that rests on a 45-acre wooded plot in a Tennessee “holler” perfect for hiking, camping, and nature walks. Located less than a half-hour from downtown Knoxville, an exciting and creative city of 200,00 in the foothill of the Great Smoky Mountains, SAFTA is an ideal location for those looking for a rural get-away with access to urban amenities.

The SAFTA Writers Coop is a 10×10′ dry cabin approximately a fourth of a mile from thecoop1.jpg
SAFTA farmhouse. This tiny house is furnished with a twin bed, a desk, a wood-burning stove, a deck that looks over the pasture and pond, as well as a personal detached outhouse. While the cabin has neither electricity nor running water, residents will have full access to the amenities at farmhouse as well as solitude from other residents to write in the rolling hills of East Tennessee.

coop2.jpgEach residency costs $150/week and includes your own private dry cabin as well as 24-hour access to the farmhouse amenities.

This year, SAFTA is excited to offer two fellowships for writers during the fall period. These fellowships will be fully funded, allowing writers to stay at the Writer’s Coop for free. Applications for these fellowships are due by August 1, 2019.

All other applications for this residency are free and rolling. Apply today to get preferred dates.

Find out more at www.sundressacademyforthearts.com.

 

Sundress Reading Series Seeks Applicants!

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The Sundress Reading Series is an award-winning literary reading series in the heart of Knoxville, TN, just miles from the Great Smoky Mountains. An extension of Sundress Publications and the Sundress Academy for the Arts, the Sundress Reading Series features nationally recognized writers in all genres from around the US while also supporting local and regional nonprofits.

We are currently curating our fall reading series schedule on October 13, November 10, and December 8, 2019. Our readings take place monthly on Sundays at 1PM at Hexagon Brewing Company.

 

To apply to read for the fall, send 6-8 pages of poetry or 8-15 pages of prose, a 100-word bio, CV, and preferred reading dates to sundresspublications@gmail.com. Please make sure the subject line reads “Reading Series Application.” Application deadline is August 15, 2019.

We will make every effort possible to contact those chosen by September 1, 2019. While we are currently unable to pay our readers, authors are given a discount on future SAFTA residencies and are encouraged to sell their own books and merchandise at the event.

Find our more or to view some of our past readers and schedules, visit us at: www.sundressacademyforthearts.com.

Meet Our New Social Media Intern: Maria Esquinca

IMG_6491-2I must have fallen in love with storytelling as a child. I remember my uncle reading out loud to me from a big fairy tale book. I loved hearing his voice bring to life the characters within the page. After that, it was only a matter of time before I was reading on my own.

I grew up in a dysfunctional family, and I was also a very awkward kid, so reading became a form of escape for me. I could read for hours. Eventually, I started writing, and writing became a way for me to process trauma. It was therapeutic. So, I’ve had a very personal relationship with reading and writing for most of my life. My advisor and professor has told me “writing saved my life” and I believe it has saved mine, too.

Currently, I’m getting my M.F.A in poetry at the University of Miami. A huge portion of my writing has been about immigration policy. I live on the border so immigration has been a topic that has always impacted me. I call myself a Fronteriza, it comes from the word “frontera” which means border in English. I was born in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, and grew up in El Paso, Texas. The two are often described as sister cities because of their proximity. I also write about my family and identity.

I’m excited to bring my experiences point of view to Sundress Publications, but more importantly, I’m excited to intern in a press that cares about diversity, representation, and is women-led.

Maria Esquinca is an MFA candidate at the University of Miami. She is the winner of the 2018 Alfred Boas Poetry Prize, judged by Victoria Chang. Her poetry has appeared in The Florida Review, Scalawag, Acentos Review and is forthcoming from Glass: A Journal of Poetry.  A Fronteriza, she was born in Ciudad Juárez, México and grew up in El Paso, Texas. You can find her on Twitter @m_esquinca.

 

SAFTA Announces Winners of 2019 VIDA Residency Fellowships

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Sundress Academy for the Arts (SAFTA) is pleased to announce the winners of the VIDA fellowships for the fall residency period, Valentine Conaty and Ansley Moon. SAFTA paired with VIDA, a research-driven organization aiming to increase issues in contemporary literary culture, to offer these fellowships for two women or nonbinary writers in any genre.

SAFTA is an artists’ residency on a 45-acre farm in Knoxville, Tennessee that hosts workshops, retreats, and residencies for writers, actors, filmmakers, and visual artists. All are guided by experienced, professional instructors from a variety of creative disciplines who are dedicated to cultivating the arts in East Tennessee.

conatyValentine Conaty is a Birmingham-grown artist and editor based in Queens. She is the fou
nder and Editor in Chief at Bomb Cyclone, a journal of ecopoetics and mixed media art. At work, she supports poets, small presses, and literary nonprofits in planning events at Poets House—among the nation’s largest public poetry libraries. Work may be found in Anomaly, Petrichor, The Operating System’s Ex-Spec Po series, Glass Poetry’s Poets Resist series, and at VIDA: Women in Literary Arts—or forthcoming in Prelude and REALITY BEACH.

Ansley Moon is the author of the poetry collection, How to Bury the Dead (Black Coffee moonPress, 2011) and the recipient of awards and fellowships from Kundiman and Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, among others, as well as a recent finalist for the Jake Adam York Poetry Prize and the Great Indian Poetry Collective Emerging Poets Prize. She lives and works in New York.

Finalists included Juliana Roth, Threa Almontaser, and Kathryn Anastasi.

Applications for fall residencies at SAFTA are now open and can be found at: http://www.sundresspublications.com/safta/apply.htm

 

Project Bookshelf: Bailey Martin

I am not always capable of admitting when I have a problem.

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When I was first instructed to write a piece about my bookshelf, I thought, “No problem. 

My bookshelf is two drawers, and those two drawers are among the most organized baileybookshelf2spaces in my room.” Feeling confident, I took my phone, camera app open, into my bedroom.

 

These two drawers, I am proud of. They’re holding an impressive amount of books, the space aggressively utilized to its maximum potential. There’s nothing to write home about with regard to my tastes, which vary wildly from graphic novel to biography to baileybookshelf3the complete box set of Avatar: The Last Airbender. Nonetheless, these drawers are respectable.

 

Then, I remembered my bedside table. It’s stocked with some short fiction and what I call “emergency poetry” for putting me to sleep or waking me up. Fine.

 

 

 

 

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Oh, right, there’s also the stack of New Books, purchased anytime over the past six months which I simply cannot fit in my drawers and which have yet to be elevated to bedside status.

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It’d also be irresponsible for me to forget the haphazard mess under my desk, which is where I store art and photography books, my Joan Didion collection, some errant novels and nonfiction, and some more emergency poetry.

 

 

 

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It was upon noticing the stack of books on the floor next to the stack of books under my desk that I thought, “Okay, this might not look so good after all.”

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I left my room thinking I’d captured it all, only to find four more art books, five poetry collections, and a journal on my living room table. That, and the open sociolinguistics book on the couch, the Sartre and Glück in my backpack, and at least six tabs of short stories currently open on my laptop. 

All this being said, I am open to more recommendations.

 

 

Bailey Martin is a writer and English student at the University of Tennessee. She was awarded the 2019 Michael Dennis Poetry Award and Margaret Artley Woodruff Award for Creative Writing. In her free time, she enjoys learning about linguistics, taking photos of cows, and thinking about the circus.

Sundress Holler Salon on Saturday, June 8th!

The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to host a new Holler Salon with a poetry reading and dinner at Firefly Farms. An extension of our award-winning Sundress Reading Series, Holler Salon aims to encourage conversation and collaboration between creative individuals in a variety of disciplines. The event, to be held Saturday, June 8th from 6-10 p.m., will be free and open to the public and will feature poets Emari DiGiorgio, Shannon Sankey, Muriel Leung, and Monica Brashears.

Emari DiGiorgioEmari DiGiorgio is the author of Girl Torpedo, the winner of the 2017 Numinous Orison, Luminous Origin Literary Award, and The Things a Body Might Become. She’s the recipient of the Auburn Witness Poetry Prize, the Ellen La Forge Memorial Poetry Prize, the Elinor Benedict Poetry Prize, RHINO’s Founder’s Prize, and a poetry fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. She’s received residencies from the Vermont Studio Center, Sundress Academy of the Arts, and Rivendell Writers’ Colony. She teaches at Stockton University, is a Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation Poet, is the Senior Reviews Editor for Tupelo Quarterly, and hosts World Above, a monthly reading series in Atlantic City, NJ.

 

Shannon Sankey

Shannon Sankey is the author of We Ran Rapturous (The Atlas Review, 2019). Her poems have appeared at Poets.org, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, the minnesota review, Puerto del Sol, Sugar House Review, Barrelhouse, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a 2017 Academy of American Poets Prize. She holds an MFA from Chatham University, where she was the Whitford Fellow. She is the founder of Stranded Oak Press.

 

 

Muriel Leung

Muriel Leung is the author of Bone Confetti, winner of the 2015 Noemi Press Book Award. A Pushcart Prize nominated writer, her writing can be found in The Baffler, Cream City Review, Gulf Coast, The Collagist, Fairy Tale Review, and others. She is a recipient of fellowships to Kundiman, VONA/Voices Workshop and the Community of Writers. She is the Poetry Co-Editor of Apogee Journal. She also co-hosts the blood-jet writing hour podcast with rachelle cruz and mt vallarta. Currently, she is a Dornsife Fellow in Creative Writing and Literature at the University of Southern California. She is from Queens, NY.

 

 

Monica Brashears

Monica Brashears is a graduate of the University of Tennessee and is entering Syracuse University in August for an MFA in fiction. She has a double-major in English with a concentration in Creative Writing and Africana Studies. Her literary diet consists of Black Literature with a pinch of Southern Folklore. She is also a recipient of the Robert A. Burke Award for fiction, Eleanor Burke Award for nonfiction, Michael Dennis Award for poetry, and Margaret Artley Woodruff Award . She gets down to any music with flavor and really enjoys the company of cats. Some of Monica’s favorite things are as follows: fresh popcorn, full moons, and vanilla perfume.

 

 

 

 

While dinner is provided, attendees are invited to BYOB.

The Sundress Academy for the Arts (SAFTA) is an artists’ residency that hosts workshops, retreats, and residencies for writers, actors, filmmakers, and visual artists. All are guided by experienced, professional instructors from a variety of creative disciplines who are dedicated to cultivating the arts in East Tennessee.

 

Meet Our New Intern: Bailey Martin

Even the most cursory of glances over my childhood behavior threatens a future in English. My affinity for reading and writing – and my utter weakness in math and science – were noted early on by my parents and teachers. I wrote my first stories about my Barbies. In the fourth grade, I attempted a novel, and soon after I began writing plays to perform with my friends at after-school. To say writing has been a lifelong love of mine would be an understatement – it’s more of a compulsion, a instinct, and an excuse to ignore the real world.

I first began writing poetry in a sixth grade English class. We were meant to bring in and read poems related to what we were studying and instead of doing that, I furiously scribbled my own minutes before my turn. The poems were bad, as they would be for years, and often are still today. Luckily, kind and wonderful teachers throughout my academic career have managed to find potential in me. These teachers, like my high school Creative Writing teacher and many talented professors at the University of Tennessee, have nurtured my love of writing, encouraged me to pursue it relentlessly, and challenged me to grow and improve.

I owe a real debt of gratitude to the writers in my life. Those I’ve been lucky enough to meet inspire me every day with their talent and tenacity. It’s for this reason, among others, that I’m so thrilled to join the Sundress team. I look forward to assisting, however I can, in the telling of stories.

 

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Bailey Martin is a writer and English student at the University of Tennessee. She was awarded the 2019 Michael Dennis Poetry Award and Margaret Artley Woodruff Award for Creative Writing. In her free time, she enjoys learning about linguistics, taking photos of cows, and thinking about the circus. 

PROJECT BOOKSHELF: PARKER ANDERSON

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My bookshelf might look a bit small, but this is a fraction of all the books I own! Most of my books are still at my mom’s house, as I’ve been moving around a lot throughout college. Choosing which books to bring to college and which to leave behind was challenging – it was so hard to prioritize which books to bring! As you can see from the stickers on the spines, I get most of my books from Thriftbooks, which is one of the best places to buy books hands down! However, I don’t buy books as often as I’d like to – ever since I came to college, I’ve usually checked out books to read from Hodges Library.

My poetry collection has some works by poets whom I admire. Lucille Clifton’s Blessing the Boats was one of the first books that got me into writing poetry seriously. Jasmine An’s Naming the No-Name Woman and Kaveh Akbar’s Calling a Wolf a Wolf are both filled with powerful poems that are definitely worth the read (and reread!) and have been formative to my own craft. In the future I hope to acquire more poetry books, especially works by queer and trans poets.

I have many of my favorite fiction works on my shelves. Growing up I read lots of fantasy, and Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea series has been my most-loved fantasy series thus far. I have a lot of nostalgia for the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series, and I like to revisit them every so often. Currently, my favorite fiction book is Hector Tobar’s The Tattooed Soldier, which I read for a course at UT last year.

The rest of my books are miscellaneous short stories, essays, and other works. When I came to UT, I started reading more short stories, since I can usually read one or two in between readings for class. The Forbidden Stories of Marta Veneranda by Sonia Rivera-Valdes is my favorite collection of short works, and I’m always on the lookout for more short stories to read!

After I graduate, I hope to move somewhere where I can keep all my books together and accumulate even more! There are many authors and poets who inspire me, and it feels good having a few of their works on my shelves.

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Parker Anderson is a queer writer and English student at the University of Tennessee. They are an emerging poet and essayist who loves reading, spending time outdoors, and playing video games. Most nights, you can find them experimenting with spices in their kitchen or chatting about dogs behind the front desk at Pendergrass Agriculture and Veterinary Library.

Sundress Academy for the Arts & VIDA Now Accepting Applications for Fall Artist Residencies

Sundress Academy for the Arts (SAFTA) is excited to announce that they are now accepting applications for short-term artists’ residencies in creative writing, visual art, film/theater, music, and more. Each residency includes a room of one’s own, access to a communal kitchen, bathroom, office, and living space, plus wireless internet.

The length of a residency can run from one to three weeks. SAFTA is currently accepting applications for our fall residency period, which runs from August 21st to December 31st, 2019. The deadline for fall residency applications is May 15, 2019.

For the fall residency period, SAFTA will be pairing with VIDA to offer two fellowships (one full fellowship and one 50% fellowship) for a week-long residency to two women writers of any genre. VIDA’s mission as a research-driven organization is to increase critical attention to contemporary women’s writing as well as further transparency around gender equality issues in contemporary literary culture. Fellowships will be chosen by guest judge, Sarah Clark.

SarahClark

Sarah Clark is a non-binary Native (Nanticoke) editor, writer, and cultural consultant. They are a VIDA Board member, Executive Editor at Vida Review, Co-Editor at Bettering American Poetry, a reader at Atlas Review, as well as Editor-in-Chief at Features & Reviews Editor at Anomaly. They curated Anomaly’s GLITTERBRAIN folio on mental health by trans and queer writers of color, a folio on Indigenous & Decolonial Futures & Futurisms, and edited Drunken Boat’s folios on Sound Art, “Desire & Interaction,” and a collection of global indigenous art and literature, “First Peoples, Plural.” They were co-editor of Apogee Journal’s #NoDAPL #Still Here folio, and co-edited Apogee Journal’s series “WE OUTLAST EMPIRE,” of work against imperialism, and “Place[meant],” on place and meaning. Sarah has previously read for Sundress’s Best of the Net and Curious Specimens anthologies.

The SAFTA farmhouse is located on a working farm that rests on a 45-acre wooded plot in a Tennessee “holler” perfect for hiking, camping, and nature walks. Located less than a half-hour from downtown Knoxville, an exciting and creative city of 200,000 in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains, SAFTA is an ideal location for those looking for a rural get-away with access to urban amenities.

The residency bedrooms are 130 sq. ft. with queen-size platform bed, closet, dresser, and desk. There is also a communal kitchen supplied with stove, refrigerator, and microwave plus plenty of cook- and dining-ware. The facility also includes a full-size working 19th century full-size letterpress with type, woodworking tools, a 1930’s drafting table, and an extensive library of contemporary literature.

For more information and application material, visit our website at sundressacademyforthearts.com.