CRWROPPS Post: Residency Opportunity

Dear Professor Joseph,

 

I'm writing, as I do once a year, to ask whether one of your current or former students might be a good fit for a summer creative writing residency at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts.

 

Tent: Creative Writing is a completely free week of workshops, literary seminars, and conversations for twenty emerging writers who are curious about connections between Jewishness and contemporary culture. In 2020, it will take place from May 31–June 5, with workshops in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.

 

Our workshop faculty have included Nancy Reisman, Rivka Galchen, Sam Lipsyte, Eileen Pollack, and Lisa Olstein, and guest speakers have included Don Share (Poetry), Johnny Temple (Akashic Books), Jess Zimmerman (Electric Lit), Margeaux Wiseman (Viking/Knopf), John Freeman (Freeman's), Andrew Leland (The Believer/The Organist), and Rebecca Wolff (Fence).

 

As I hope you can tell, we explore the legacy of modern Jewish literature, but we're not parochial; writers who come to us don't have to identify as Jewish, or write overtly "Jewish material." In our seminars, we read writers like Philip Roth, Adrienne Rich, and Rachel Kushner. We're an organization devoted to recovering and translating Yiddish books and exploring modern Jewish culture, and have no political or religious agenda.

 

More information and a (mercifully short) application are available here. I'd be happy to hear directly from anyone who has questions about the program. If you could forward this email on to specific students who you think might be interested—or to all the students in your class or program—I'd appreciate that. Applications are due on February 2, 2020.

 

Thank you and best wishes,

 

Josh Lambert

Academic Director, Yiddish Book Center