Tag: scholarship

Sundress Academy for the Arts Now Accepting Applications for the Havens Scholarship for Spring and Fall Artist Residencies

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The Sundress Academy for the Arts, via a generous gift from the Havens family, is proud to announce our newest residency fellowship, the Dr. Kristi Larkin Havens Memorial Fellowship for Service to the Community. This fellowship seeks to honor Dr. Havens’ dedication to community, activism, music, literature and the arts.

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Dr. Kristi Larkin Havens served as the Community Outreach Director for Sundress Academy for the Arts and then as the Vice President of the Board of Directors for Sundress Publications for over six years.  She earned a Ph.D. in English from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where she was a Lecturer and the Assistant Director of Undergraduate Studies.  She was a photographer who served as a producer on films for several local competitions including The Knoxville 24-Hour Film Festival and the Grindhouse Grind-out.  For many years she served as a coordinator for the Knoxville Girls Rock Camp, an organization dedicated to fostering inclusivity and creativity. For her, the arts were a natural venue for pursuing the aims of social justice.

This fellowship will be awarded to a writer who has shown exceptional service to their own community through any of the following: volunteering, organizing, fundraising, board membership, etc. Fellowship winners will receive either a one-week full fellowship along with a $250 stipend or a two-week full fellowship for a writing residency at the Sundress Academy for the Arts at Firefly Farms in Knoxville, TN for either the spring or fall of 2020. The spring residency period runs from December 23, 2019-May 24, 2020, and the fall period runs from August 24-December 27, 2020.

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 letterpress with type, woodworking tools, and a 1930’s drafting table.

To apply, please provide a completed residency application, a writing sample, a CV or resume, a statement of service to the community that is no longer than 500 words, and two references who can speak to the applicant’s record of service. Application fees will be waived for those also applying for financial aid.

For more information, visit our website: http://www.sundressacademyforthearts.com/ or find us on Facebook at Sundress Academy for the Arts or on Twitter, @SundressPub

VIDA Residency Fellowships Winners Announced

VIDA Residency Fellowships Winners Announced

Sundress Academy for the Arts (SAFTA) is pleased to announce the winners of the VIDA fellowships for the fall residency period, Raena Shirali and Nicole Connolly. SAFTA paired with VIDA, a research-driven organization aiming to increase issues in contemporary literary culture, to offer these fellowships for two women writers in any genre. This year’s winners were chosen by guest judge Elissa Washuta.

View More: http://giniaworrellphotography.pass.us/rshiraliRaena Shirali is the author of GILT (YesYes Books, 2017), winner of the 2018 Milt Kessler Poetry Book Award. Shirali’s honors include a Pushcart Prize, the Philip Roth Residency at Bucknell University’s Stadler Center for Poetry, and poetry prizes from Boston Review , Gulf Coast, and Cosmonauts Avenue. Raised in Charleston, South Carolina, the Indian American poet earned her MFA from The Ohio State University. She currently lives in Philadelphia, where she is a coorganizer for We (Too) Are Philly, a summer poetry festival highlighting voices of color. Shirali also serves as Poetry Editor for Muzzle Magazine and is on the editorial team for Vinyl.

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Nicole Connolly lives and works in Orange County, CA, which she promises is mostly unlike what you see on TV. She received her MFA from Bowling Green State University, and her work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in such journals as ANMLY, Fugue, Drunk in a Midnight Choir, and Glass: A Journal of Poetry.

Applications for spring residencies at SAFTA are now open and can be found at sundressacademyforthearts.com.

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, 2017.   The deadline for fall residency applications is May 7th, 2016.

screen-shot-2017-02-17-at-2-00-27-pmFor 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, Idra Novey.

Idra Novey is the author of the novel Ways to Disappear, winner of the 2016 Brooklyn Eagles Prize and a New York Times Editors’ Choice. Her most recent poetry collection  Exit, Civilian

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Idra Novey

was selected by Patri­cia Smith for the 2011 National Poetry Series. Her fiction and poetry have been translated into ten languages and she’s written for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The Paris Review. She is the recipient of awards from the National Endow­ment for the Arts, Poets & Writ­ers Mag­a­zine, the PEN Trans­la­tion Fund, the Poetry Foundation, and the Poetry Society of America. She’s also translated the work of several prominent Brazilian writers, most recently Clarice Lispector’s novel The Pas­sion Accord­ing to G.H.

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.

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 $25 or $15 for current students (with student email) payable online*

For more information and application material, visit our website or find us on Facebook or on Twitter.

*Application fee will be waived for those applying for the VIDA scholarship who demonstrate financial need. Please state this in your application under the financial need section.

Lambda Literary Winners Announced!

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Sundress Academy for the Arts (SAFTA) is delighted to announce that Brian Kornell and Haley Fedor have won the Lambda Literary fellowships for the spring residency period. The Lambda Literary Foundation, an organization striving to preserve the LGBTQ culture by celebrating Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer literature, partnered with SAFTA to sponsor two LGBTQ-identified writers for a week-long residency. Our full scholarship was awarded to Brian Kornell, and the partial scholarship was awarded to Haley Fedor.

image1Brian Kornell earned his MFA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His writing appears in The Kenyon Review, Queen Mob’s Teahouse, Luna Luna Magazine, OCHO, and elsewhere. His work has also appeared in The Rumpus, where he is the assistant essays editor. At present, he is working on a memoir about growing up gay in the Midwest as well as being closeted and married until he was in his early thirties. You can find him on Twitter @briankornell.

 

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Haley Fedor, a PhD candidate at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, is a queer author from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Section 8 Magazine, The Fem, Guide to Kulchur Magazine, Literary Orphans, Typehouse Literary Magazine, Crab Fat Literary Magazine, and the anthology Dispatches from Lesbian America. In 2014, she was nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Congratulations also to our finalists who were also awarded residencies: Alexis Smithers, Grey Vild, Marissa Higgins, Callum Angus, Emily Withnall, and Celeste Chan.

The Sundress Academy for the Arts is now open for summer residency applications. For the summer residency period, SAFTA will be offering four full fellowships for the following—two fellowships for writers or artists of color (one sponsored by the Tennessee Arts Commission), one Tennessee Arts Commission fellowship for an Appalachian writer, and one Tennessee Arts Commission fellowship for a Tennessee writer. Three of these fellowships were made possible by an ABC grant from the Tennessee Arts Commission, awarded for the 2016-2017 season.