Sundress Publications and the Sundress Academy for the Arts want to say THANK YOU to the nearly 50 donors who gave to this year’s fundraising campaign!  It is with your help and generosity that we are able to continue to grow!

We’re in the process of building a new barn at Firefly Farms, our forty-five acre instructional, residency, and outreach center. Much of the equipment we have for our visiting artists and staff—including a drafting table, antique letterpress, and specialized tools—must share space with livestock feeds and farm equipment in our basement. This barn will allow us to reclaim the space and transform it from a general-purpose storage area to a workspace for visiting artists and writers as well as a reading space for our quarterly Holler Salons!

 

While the crowd-funding campaign is over, we are still taking donations for a number of items this holiday season!  We are still selling our 2016 calendars, entitled “Breaking the Binary,” which feature gender-swapped images of work.  We are also selling 2×2″ spaces inside the barn where you can have one of your own poems or one of your favorite poems immortalized in our Poetry Barn, where we will host readings and events on the SAFTA property! (Makes a GREAT holiday gift!)  We are also currently looking for people to sponsor an LGBTQ writer for this year’s OUTSpoken series, which starts up in January!

As a volunteer-run organization, all of the proceeds go directly growing our organization and supporting the arts both in Knoxville and the country at large.  And of course, they also go to help keep warm the farm’s mascot & Hero of Canton, Jayne!

 

“People who don’t really know Jayne like to say that he’s a big jackass, but that’s because they misunderstand his commitment to the arts. He sings everyday, his beautiful music echoing throughout the holler. Of course, he loves when his fans support his creative efforts—I mean, who doesn’t?—but even if no one was listening, he’d be out there singing. He just does it for the love of the music. What’s more, he really believes in supporting and working with other creators. He makes it a point to spend time with every writer, actor, artist, and musician who visits Firefly Farms. I guess the most amazing thing about Jayne is that he’s such an amazing leader, tough but loyal to everyone around him. He’s no jackass; he’s a badass.”
—T.A. Noonan, close friend of Jayne and former long-term resident at Firefly Farms

“My residency at Firefly Farms was eye-opening in many ways. It’s not often we are afforded uninterrupted silence and given huge spans of time devoted singularly to writing. It is a gift. I hung out with Jayne for the first two steamy weeks in early September, and I turned to him whenever I felt stuck. In workshops, I was given so much encouragement and constructive critique, and cemented my goal of applying to MFA programs in creative nonfiction. All of the applications are now ready to turn in, and two of my essays in the collection were written and revised exclusively at SAFTA. My experience with Jayne made me unafraid of my artistic future and so excited to be a member of the literary community.”
—Gabrielle Montesanti, Writer and Former SAFTA Resident

 

To support the Sundress Academy for the Arts and get cool swag, naming rights to one of SAFTA’s chickens, discounted Sundress titles, or get your poem printed on Jayne’s new barn for future fellows to read, visit our store today!

If you are already one of Jayne’s fantastic backers, please spread the word by sharing our campaign.