Residencies

Soul Mountain

In spring 2007, poet Marilyn Nelson, Soul Mountain's founder and host, generously offered a tuition-free one-week residency at this beautiful retreat to a current UW-Madison MFA poetry student. An outside judge awarded the residency to Sara Nelson (no relation to Marilyn!), who found her time at Soul Mountain and working with Marilyn inspiring and productive. We were pleased when Marilyn Nelson decided to award another one-week residency in 2008. The recipient of the 2008 Soul Mountain residency, again determined by an outside judge, was Laurel Bastian. For more information about Soul Mountain click here.

La Muse Writers' & Artists' Retreat

Kerry Eielson-Fanning, a former undergraduate creative writing major, and her husband John Fanning, co-founders of La Muse Writers' & Artists Retreat, a breathtaking retreat in Southern France, where writers and artists come to work in a peaceful, isolated and inspiring setting, have generously offered to provide a member of UW-Madison's creative writing community (ie, present and former MFAs and Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing fellows) with space to work on a specific writing project for the month of June. The Fannings act as judges.

Kerry and John awarded the 2008 La Muse Residency to current fiction MFA student, Emma Snyder.