Residency Dates: February 13, 2022 - March 05, 2022
Application Deadline: September 19, 2021
Jaquira Díaz is a Pabst Endowed Chair for Master Writers
Born in Puerto Rico and raised in Miami, Jaquira Díaz is the author of Ordinary Girls: A Memoir, winner of a Whiting Award, a Florida Book Awards Gold Medal, and a Lambda Literary Awards finalist. Ordinary Girls was an Indies Introduce Selection, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection, an Indie Next Pick, a Library Reads selection, and finalist for the B&N Discover Award. A fiction writer, essayist, journalist, and cultural critic, Díaz’s work has been published extensively, including in The Guardian, Time Magazine, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, The Best American Essays, Tin House, Longreads, Conde Nast Traveler, and is forthcoming in The Atlantic. She is the recipient of two Pushcart Prizes, an Elizabeth George Foundation grant, and fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Kenyon Review, and the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. A former Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s MFA Program in Creative Writing, and Consulting Editor at the Kenyon Review, she splits her time between Montréal, Miami Beach, and the UK with her spouse, the writer Lars Horn. Her second book, I Am Deliberate: A Novel, is forthcoming from Algonquin Books.
Residency Statement:
This will be a generative workshop, so we’ll focus on generating new work, or expanding on work we’ve already written. You may choose to work on fiction or nonfiction, but you should come prepared to write and engage in meaningful conversation with other writers. Our conversations will encourage and prioritize the centering of marginalized and underrepresented voices and communities and push writers to see the writing in front of them as a work-in-progress rather than a product. We’ll read and examine excerpts of memoirs, essays, and short stories with a particular focus on craft, and on shaping a book project. We’ll examine how fiction and nonfiction can speak to something larger, more expansive, how your writing fits into the larger world. It’s my personal philosophy that our writing should center us—our communities, our cultures, our history, our music, our language, our joy, our everything—and so when I refer to “the larger world,” I mean for you to consider your interpretation of that, not what the dominant culture considers relevant..
Application Requirements:
1. a bio or CV that includes your publication history and your instruction in creative writing and/or workshop experience in creative writing
2. up 15 pages of fiction or nonfiction
3. a brief personal statement or artist’s statement about your work and what you hope to accomplish during the residency (1 to 2 pages)
Residency Fee:
Waived for this Residency (Includes weekday meals and housing; does not include artist materials, transportation, or weekend meals.)
For details, please visit the Mentoring Artist details page.
Application fee: $25 Click here to Apply!
The engagement of Jaquira Díaz is funded in part by a grant from South Arts in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts and the Florida Department of State, Division of Arts and Culture.
