Sundress Academy for the Arts (SAFTA) is thrilled 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 as well as access to a communal kitchen, bathroom, office, and living space, plus wireless internet.
The length of a residency can range from one to three weeks. SAFTA is currently accepting applications for our spring residency period, which runs from December 23, 2019-May 24, 2020. The deadline for spring residency applications is September 15th, 2019.
SAFTA will be pairing with Lambda Literary to offer two fellowships (one full fellowship and one 50% fellowship) for a week-long residency to LGBTQIA+ writers of any genre. Lambda believes Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer literature is fundamental to the preservation of our culture, and that LGBTQIA+ lives are affirmed when our stories are written, published and read. All applicants to the two fellowships must identify as LGBTQIA+. Partial scholarships are also available to any applicant with financial need.
This year’s judge will be Brynn Martin, a Kansas native living in Knoxville, where she 
received her MFA in poetry from the University of Tennessee. She co-hosts Shitty First Drafts, a podcast made for and by writers. Her poetry has appeared in or is forthcoming from Contrary Magazine, Yes, Poetry, Rogue Agent, and Crab Orchard Review.
The SAFTA farmhouse is located on a working farm that rests on a 45-acre wooded plot in a Tennessee “holler” perfect for hiking and exploring. The farm is less than a half-hour from downtown Knoxville, a bustling, innovative city of 200,000 in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains, making SAFTA an ideal location for those looking for a rural get-away with access to urban amenities.
The residency bedrooms are 130 sq. ft. with a queen-size platform bed, closet, dresser, and desk. The communal kitchen is supplied with stove, refrigerator, and microwave plus plenty of cook- and dining-ware. The office and library have two working computers—one Mac, one PC. The library contains over 1,000 books with a particularly large contemporary poetry section and, thanks to The Wardrobe, many recent titles by women and nonbinary writers. The facility also includes a full-size working 19th century full-size letterpress with type, woodworking tools, and a 1930’s drafting table.
To apply for the Sundress Academy for the Arts residency, you will need the following:
-Application form (including artist’s statement and contact information for two references)
-CV or artist’s resume (optional)
-Artist sample (see website for more details on genre specifications)
-Application fee of $15 or $10 for current students (with student email) payable online*
For more information on this and other fellowships, visit our website: http://www.sundressacademyforthearts.com/ or find us on Facebook, under Sundress Academy for the Arts or on Twitter, @SundressPub
*Application fee will be waived for those applying for the Lambda Literary scholarship who demonstrate financial need. Please state this in your application under the financial need section.
Fox Frazier-Foley is the author of two prize-winning poetry collections: The Hydromatic Historics (Bright Hill Press, 2015), which was selected by Vermont Poet Laureate Chard deNiord as the recipient of the Bright Hull Press Poetry Award, and Exodus in X Minor (Sundress Publications, 2014). Her most recent volume of poetry, Like Ash in the Air After Something Has Burned (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2017) was nominated for an Elgin Award. She edited the anthologies Political Punch: Contemporary Poems on the Politics of Identity (Sundress Publications, 2016) and Among the Margins: Critical and Lyrical Writing on Aesthetics (Ricochet Editions, 2016). Fox was graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Binghamton University, and was honored with merit-based fellowships at Columbia University, where she earned her MFA. She was a Provost’s Fellow at the Univeristy of Southern California, where she earned a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing. Fox created and manages Agape Editions. She is currently at work in a long-form journalism project about violent crime in upstate New York, titled Carousel.
Muriel Leung is the recipient of the Alternating Current sponsored fellowship. She is the author of Bone Confetti, winner of the 2015 Noemi Press Book Award. A Pushcart Prize nominated writer, her writing can be found or is forthcoming in Gulf Coast, Drunken Boat, 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 and co-host of The Blood-Jet Writing Hour podcast. Currently, she is a Dornsife Fellow in Creative Writing and Literature at University of California. She is from Queens, NY.
Nicole Shawan Junior (Smith College BA, Pace University MST, Temple University JD) is a storyteller who was born & bred in the bass-heavy beat & scratch of Brooklyn, where the Bed-Stuy cool of beautiful inner-city life barely survived the crippling caused by crack cocaine. She is a black, queer and hood-born Womanxst. Nicole puts pen-to-paper to capture the journeys of around-the-block black girls. Nicole’s writing has appeared in For Harriet, Rigorous Magazine and The Feminist Wire. Her work has been supported by The Hurston/Wright Foundation, African Voices and the Black Film & TV Collective, to name a few. She’s currently completing Cracked Concrete, a coming of age memoir, and Block Girls, a play. A filmmaker, Nicole directed and co-produced the documentary short Boundless: A Celebration of Black Women and co-produced the YouTube web series This. That. & the Third. Nicole is currently bringing her short film, To Touch A Moth, to production. When off set, Nicole is also the creator of Roots. Wounds. Words. Writing Workshop. Check her out at 
Jane Wong’s poems can be found in Best American Poetry 2015, POETRY, American Poetry Review, Third Coast, AGNI, and others. A Kundiman fellow, she is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and fellowships from the U.S. Fulbright Program, the Fine Arts Work Center, Hedgebrook, Artist Trust, and Bread Loaf. She is the author of Overpour (Action Books, 2016) and is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Western Washington University.
