La Muse has offered residencies and fellowships since 2008 and barter residencies and fellowships since 2001.
We now offer 3 residencies each year, in different fields.
The residencies will be in the months of January (Xu Xi this year), April and November.
November Wildcard Fellows
Siobhan Mannion, 2016, Irish short story writer.
Seamus Scanlon, an Irish playwright and fiction writer from Ireland, based in New York.
Kieran Carroll a playwright and poet from Australia. Kieran’s disembodied head performing Philip Larkin’s “This Be the Verse” at our book break was a lot of fun.
Shahnaz Habib a freelance writer and editor, based in Brooklyn, New York.
University Fellows and Residences
In the past we have partnered with the University of Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program, University of Wisconsin Fellowship and An Foras Feasa a research consortium of four institutions: National University of Ireland Maynooth, Dundalk Institute of Technology, Dublin City University and St Patricks College Drumcondra.
One of the most recent Iowa/La Muse Fellows was Brendan Wolfe, a writer and editor (Kirkus, San Francisco Chronicle, The Christian Science Monitor, Colorado Review, et al.) who has edited two alternative weekly newspapers, worked on the copy desk of a daily newspaper, and taught.
We were delighted to hear that the book Brendan was working on during his time here at La Muse about the jazz musician Bix Biederbecke was published.
You can check out Brendan’s great blog The Beiderbecke Affair which to quote Brendan
concerns itself with things literary while also indulging its proprietor’s rather unrelated interests in the early jazz musician Bix Beiderbecke and Korean culture, history, and politics about all things.
Another resident in conjunction with Iowa was Tom Montgomery-Fate. Tom was the first winner of the Iowa Fellowship.
Tom was recently on National Public Radio in Chicago, reading the introduction of the book he’s writing right now. It’s about Thoreau’s Walden, relaxation and seeing things as they really are.
Tom is a professor of English at College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. You can check out his other books here on Amazon.
The La Muse/University of Wisconsin Fellowship, offered an alum of the University of Wisconsin Creative Writing Department to come on retreat to La Muse too.
Ed Porter who used his time at La Muse to finish revisions on the short story collection he had been working on over the past three years entitled “The Changing Station,” was our last Fellow from Wisconsin.
The title story of Ed’s collection, published first in the Colorado Review (Spring 2008), was selected for the Best New American Voices 2010.
Our last fellow from An Foras Feasa was the Irish composer Eibhlís Farrell.
Eibhlís is the Head of Music and Creative Media (Ceannasaí Roinn Ceoil agus Meain Chruthaitheacha) at the Dundalk Institute of Technology.
Every November we have a Wildcard Residency, open to anyone who’d like to apply.
Future Fellowships
1. A potential September residency with cultural organizations in Ireland, France and Australia.
2. Our “Distinguished Visitor” residency: our way to thank and support artists and writers whose work we admire.
3. “Adopt an Artist”: We will present portfolios of writers and artists who are seeking residencies. These are remarkably talented individuals that we would dearly love to see sponsored to do a retreat at La Muse. Many of them are young and emerging artists from developing countries, such as Africa and Eastern Europe. Please email us if you, or someone you know, would be interested in making this happen.
These residencies are not currently underwritten by any foundations; we are simply giving a room to writers and artists who apply.
We are still exploring through which avenue to offer a residency (although we have hosted many visual artist barters) to a visual arts candidate, and to citizens of the EU and the rest of the world.