The decision has pushed organizers to reconsider what makes a residency valuable to artists. Since its inception MacDowell has strived to give artists a space away from their daily lives to pursue their work in the dynamic company of talented peers. Founded by composer Edward MacDowell and pianist Marian MacDowell, the program has hosted more than eight thousand artists on a former farm in Peterborough, New Hampshire, since 1907. Formerly known as the MacDowell Colony— earlier this year, the organization officially dropped the word colony from its name to, as the organization’s press release states, “remove terminology with oppressive overtones”—MacDowell has hosted writers such as Louise Erdrich, Audre Lorde, Ann Pachett, Mary Ruefle, Alice Walker, and Colson Whitehead, in its thirty-two studios. “It has now become a place in my mind that is holy, a place for true artistic exploration and discovery,” says poet Brenda Shaughnessy, a seven-time MacDowell resident. “When I feel like I’m in that free space, even in my mind…that’s when flow happens.”
This story is from the November - December 2020 edition of Poets & Writers Magazine.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the November - December 2020 edition of Poets & Writers Magazine.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
Literary MagNet
When Greg Marshall began writing the essays that would become his memoir, Leg: The Story of a Limb and the Boy Who Grew From It (Abrams Press, June 2023), he wanted to explore growing up in Utah and what he calls \"the oddball occurrences in my oddball family.\" He says, \"I wanted to call the book Long-Term Side Effects of Accutane and pitch it as Six Feet Under meets The Wonder Years.\" But in 2014 he discovered his diagnosis of cerebral palsy, information his family had withheld from him for nearly thirty years, telling him he had \"tight tendons\" in his leg. This revelation shifted the focus of the project, which became an \"investigation into selfhood, uncovering the untold story of my body,\" says Marshall. Irreverent and playful, Leg reckons with disability, illness, queerness, and the process of understanding our families and ourselves.
THE MEUSEUM OF HUMAN HISTORY
READING The Museum of Human History felt like listening to a great harmonic hum. After I finished it I found the hum lingering in my ears. Its echo continued for days.
The Sea Elephants
SHASTRI Akella's poised, elegant debut, The Sea Elephants, is a bildungsroman of a young man who joins a street theater group in India after fleeing his father's violent disapproval, the death of his twin sisters, and his mother's unfathomable grief.
The History of a Difficult Child
MIHRET Sibhat's debut novel begins with God dumping rain on a small Ethiopian town as though. He were mad at somebody.
The Sorrows of Others
AS I read each story in Ada Zhang’s brilliant collection, The Sorrows of Others, within the first few paragraphs— sometimes the first few sentences— I felt I understood the characters intimately and profoundly, such that every choice they made, no matter how radical, ill-advised, or baffling to those around them, seemed inevitable and true to me.
We Are a Haunting
TYRIEK White’s debut novel, We Are a Haunting, strikes me as both a love letter to New York City and a kind of elegy.
RADICAL ATTENTION
IN HER LATEST BOOK, THE LIGHT ROOM: ON ART AND CARE, PUBLISHED BY RIVERHEAD BOOKS IN JULY, KATE ZAMBRENO CELEBRATES THE ETHICAL WORK OF CAREGIVING, THE SMALL JOYS OF ORDINARY LIFE, AND AN ENGAGEMENT WITH THE NATURAL WORLD WITHIN HUMAN SPACES.
The Fine Print
HOW TO READ YOUR BOOK CONTRACT
First
GINA CHUNG'S SEA CHANGE
Blooming how she must
WITH ROOTS IN NATURE WRITING, ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE, POETRY, AND PHOTOGRAPHY, CAMILLE T. DUNGY'S NEW BOOK, SOIL: THE STORY OF A BLACK MOTHER'S GARDEN, DELVES INTO THE PERSONAL AND POLITICAL ACT OF CULTIVATING AND DIVERSIFYING A GARDEN OF HERBS, VEGETABLES, FLOWERS, AND OTHER PLANTS IN THE PREDOMINANTLY WHITE COMMUNITY OF FORT COLLINS, COLORADO.
