Linden Place Writers’ Residency welcomes Rhode Island writers to apply

The 2023 Linden Place Writers’ Residency is officially open to submissions. Beginner to advanced writers working in all genres of fiction, poetry, screenwriting, playwriting, and creative nonfiction who are over the age of 18 are welcome to apply. Applicants must consider Rhode Island their primary residence (at least 9 months of the year), or reside on the Massachusetts borderlands within 25 miles of Linden Place, or be an enrolled undergrad at neighboring Roger Williams University. 

Esteemed judges this year are Jennifer Lighty, a poet and Pushcart Prize nominee, Adam McNeil, a PhD candidate African American Studies scholar at Rutgers University, and Padma Venkatraman, a novelist and poet who has won numerous awards and appeared on many best book lists.

The three will choose 8 writers to create new works of fiction or narrative non-fiction that somehow include an aspect of Linden Place while in residence during the month of April.

Each winner will receive a free self-guided audio tour, on-site workspace during the daytime-only residency, access to archives and historians for research support, a $100 travel stipend, a discounted rate at the Bradford-Dimond-Norris B&B, and a one-on-one consult with a sensitivity reader who has expertise in early Black history. The program culminates with a free community reading and moderated discussion of works-in-progress in mid-June. Submissions are open through March 7^th at LindenPlace.org/writers-residency. Early birds who apply before February 20^th receive a discount on the application fee.

This year the residency program has expanded to work with partners who will present online and in-person writing-related programs to the public throughout the month of April. These include School One’s teen writing workshops during school vacation week, a community write-in with What Cheer Writers Club, a webinar with Catherine Zipf of Bristol Historical and Preservation Society, a student event with Roger Williams University Department of English and Creative Writing, and a webinar with sensitivity reader Renee Harleston of Writing Diversely. 

About Linden Place

Linden Place is a nonprofit museum with a potent place in American History. Built in 1810 by a DeWolf slave trader, occupants and visitors have included Presidents, enslaved Africans, famous writers, servants, freed slaves, Business magnates, Hollywood actors, abolitionists, and philanthropists. The museum’s collection includes paintings, sculptures, furniture, and rare items, such as a horse-drawn coach from the 1820’s. The house has notable architectural details and sits on 1.8 acres of land that are part of the Wampanoag/Pokanoket ancestral homelands. Its literary lineage includes salons and poetry readings attended by such writers as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and John Greenleaf Whittier.      

The residency is made possible in part by a grant from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, through an appropriation by the Rhode Island General Assembly and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.