Each year, professionals in the fields of poetry, fiction and nonfiction, composing, visual arts and theater meet, in subject juries, to select residents for the Millay Colony. The process is 100% anonymous—and we don’t release information about our juries until all decisions have been made for the coming year.
We try to save comments from jurors, so please do get in touch if you want to hear more about an acceptance or non-acceptance.
Ching-chu Hu’s music has been performed in the United States, England, Germany, Russia, Austria, China, Taiwan, and Australia, and reviews have described his music as “incredible” and “deeply moving.” Recent honors have included composer-in-residence at the Piccolo Spoleto Festival, and guest composer at the American Music Week Festival in Sofia, Bulgaria. Hu has been a composition fellow at the Aspen and Bowdoin Music Festivals, Yaddo, The MacDowell Colony, The Millay Colony, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Banff Centre for the Arts. He has received performances in various national and international festivals and concerts, including the Alternativa Festival (Center “DOM”) in Moscow.
Born in Iowa City, Iowa, Ching-chu Hu studied at Yale University, Freiburg Musikhochschule in Freiburg, Germany, The University of Iowa, and the University of Michigan, where he earned his Doctorate of Musical Arts in Composition.
Yiğit Kolat’s music explores the liminal frontiers of musical activity and potentialities in processing extra-musical data as musical information. The complicated political and social environment of his native Turkey is a recurring theme in his diverse output, which includes acoustic, electro-acoustic, and electronic works written for orchestra, chamber ensembles, voice, and solo instruments.
His works have been recognized by a prestigious array of international organizations, including the Bogliasco Foundation, the Tōru Takemitsu Composition Award, the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Belgium, and the Concours International de Composition Henri Dutilleux.
His music has been featured throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia by leading ensembles and soloists. Kolat earned his Doctorate of Musical Arts at the University of Washington.
A.W. (Andrew) Barnes has a Ph.D. in English literature and an MFA in creative writing. His memoir, The Dark Eclipse: Reflections on Suicide and Absence, has just been published (December 2018) by Bucknell University Press—distributed by Rutgers University Press—and has been nominated for a Lambda Literary Award, and a Publishing Triangle award. His nonfiction has appeared in the journals Broad Street, Away, Gertrude Press, If and Only If, and Sheepshead Review. His academic book, Post-Closet Masculinities in Early Modern English was published by Bucknell University Press in 2009. He is the Dean of the School of Liberal Arts and Science, and a Professor of Humanities and Media Studies, and Writing at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY.
Wesley Brown is the author of three published novels, Tragic Magic, Darktown Strutters, Push Comes to SHOVE; a short story collection, Dance of the Infidels; four produced plays, Boogie Woogie and Booker T, Life During Wartime, A Prophet Among Them, and Dark Meat on a Funny Mind. He co-edited the multicultural anthologies, Imagining America (fiction), Visions of America (non-fiction), edited the Teachers & Writers Guide to Frederick Douglass and wrote the narration for a segment of the PBS documentary, W.E.B. DuBois: A Biography in four Voices. He has taught at several colleges and universities, among them, Rutgers University, and currently teaches literature, drama and creative writing at Bard College at Simon’s Rock. He lives in Chatham Center, New York.
Therese Eiben is a faculty member of Philip Schultz’s Writers Studio and founding co-director of The Writers Studio / Hudson Valley branch. Most recently, her short story, “Pass the Baby,” won honorable mention and publication in december magazine’s 2018 Curt R. Johnson Prose Award for Fiction. That story is a current Pushcart Prize nominee. Therese is formerly the editor of Poets & Writers magazine. She co-edited the book The Practical Writer: From Inspiration to Publication (Penguin).
Racquel Goodison has been a resident at Yaddo and the Saltonstall Arts Colony as well as a recipient of the Astraea Emerging Lesbian Writer’s Grant and a scholarship to the Fine Arts Works Center. Her stories, poems, and creative nonfiction have been nominated for the Pushcart and can be found in various journals online and in print. She resides in Brooklyn, teaches at the City University of New York, and is working on a collection of short stories about unruly Jamaican girlhood, a topic she knows intimately.
Jeannine Ouellette’s stories and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in magazines and literary journals including Narrative, Masters Review, Penn Review, Past Ten, december, The Doctor T.J. Eckleburg, and Nowhere, as well as several anthologies, including the 2017 Nowhere Print Annual, Women’s Lives: Multicultural Perspectives, and Feminist Parenting. She is a recent prizewinner or finalist in the Iowa Review Awards, Narrative Story Prize, Masters Review Short Story Contest, Proximity Essay Awards, and the Curt Johnson Fiction Awards. Jeannine teaches writing through the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop, AWP’s Writer to Writer Program, and independently through Elephant Rock. She recently completed her first novel.
Dan Pope — is a 2002 graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop. His first novel, In the Cherry Tree, was published by Picador in 2003 and my second novel, Housebreaking, came out with Simon & Schuster in 2015. He has published stories in such print journals as McSweeneys, Iowa Review, Shenandoah, Harvard Review, Crazyhorse, Bennington Review, Fields, Best New American Voices 2007 and others.
Anamyn Turowski is a fiction writer whose short story “The Swans” was published in New Ohio Review and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Anamyn also received an Honorable Mention in Glimmer Train‘s 2015 Family Matters contest. Other publishing credits include Epiphany and the Times Union. She is currently working on a novel. Having trained to teach The Writers Studio method with Philip Schultz in New York and studied at UCLA and Bennington College, she is the co-director of the newest branch of The Writers Studio in the Hudson Valley.
Eiren Caffall is a writer and musician based in Chicago, born in New York, and raised inNew England. She has been the recipient of a Social Justice News Nexus fellowship in environmental journalism at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and a Frontline: Environmental Reportage residency at The Banff Centre for the Arts, studying with Naomi Klein. She taught creative writing for The Chicago Humanities Festival and has also been awarded residencies at Millay Colony for the Arts, Hedgebrook, and Ragdale. Her work on loss and nature, glaciers and extinction has appeared in The Rumpus, The Chicago Reader, Tikkun Daily, The Nervous Breakdown, The Manifest Station, Punk Planet, the book The Time After, and the forthcoming collection 21/21Chicago. She has also released three albums of original music, Prairie Music, Civil Twilight, and Slipping the Holdfast. Her work has been adapted into the short film Become Ocean, which was accepted into the Sidewalk Film Festival and the Wild and Scenic film festival in 2018. She lives in the Logan Square neighborhood with her husband and son.
Thirii Myo Kyaw Myint is the author of the lyric novel The End of Peril, the End of Enmity, the End of Strife, a Haven (Noemi Press, 2018) and the family history project Zat Lun, which won the 2018 Graywolf Nonfiction Prize. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in creative writing at the University of Denver and the associate editor of Denver Quarterly.
Julian Talamantez Brolaski is a poet and country singer. It is the author of Of Mongrelitude (Wave Books, 2017), Advice for Lovers (City Lights 2012), Gowanus Atropolis (Ugly Duckling Presse 2011), and coediter of NO GENDER: Reflections on the Life & Work of Kari Edwards, as well as lead singer and rhythm guitarist for the Brooklyn-based Juan & the Pines and Oakland-based The Western Skyline. Julian maintains a blog of handwritten poems here: https://julianspoems.tumblr.com/
Rocket Caleshu is a writer based in Los Angeles. He holds a BA in Africana Studies from Brown University and an MFA in Creative Writing/Critical Studies from the California Institute of the Arts, where he was the inaugural Truman Capote Literary Fellow.
Amanda Martin Katz is a Los Angeles-based artist, poet and facilitator whose work explores the social, spatial, and performative embodiment of text. She works both independently and collaboratively to produce texts, objects, text-objects, video installations, performances, and dialogic facilitations. For the past 6 years, she has been designing and operating conceptual residency projects that explore collaborative inquiry and embodied research methodologies (in Katz’s Deli, since 2012, and BOOKSHELVES, since 2016). Her work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions across the United States and in London. She received a BA from Colgate University and a MFA from Otis College of Art and Design.
Timothy Liu’s latest book is Luminous Debris: New & Selected Legerdemain (1992-2017). His journals and papers are archived in the Berg Collection at the New York Public Library. A reader of occult esoterica, he lives in Manhattan and Woodstock, NY. www.timothyliu.net
Michael Yates Crowley is a writer and performer based in Brooklyn and Mexico City. His works for theater include The Rape of the Sabine Women, by Grace B Matthias (Playwrights Realm at The Duke on 42nd Street); Gunplay: A Love Story (developed at NYTW and Ars Nova); Song of a Convalescent Ayn Rand Giving Thanks to the Godhead (American Repertory Theater, Joe’s Pub); temping (premiered at the 53rd New York Film Festival, A.R.T.); Evanston: A Rare Comedy (2013 O’Neill NPC selection); and The Ted Haggard Monologues (published by S. Fischer Verlag; filmed by HBO). He is a member of Ars Nova’s Play Group, a former NYFA Playwriting fellow and member of the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, and a graduate of the Lila Acheson Wallace Playwrights Program at Juilliard. Together with the director Michael Rau, he founded the narrative technology company Wolf 359.
Sarah Einspanier is a playwright from Dallas, TX. She is a current Writing Fellow at the Playwrights Realm and a member/co-leader of the New Georges’ Jam. An alum of Ars Nova’s Play Group, Cherry Lane’s Mentor Project (Mentor: Sheila Callaghan), Clubbed Thumb’s Early Career Writers’ Group, New Georges Special Water Residency, New York Theatre Workshop’s Mondays@3, UMASS New Play Lab, and Pipeline Theatre Company’s PlayLab. She has been a resident artist at the Millay Colony, SPACE on Ryder Farm, Sewanee Writers’ Conference (Horton Foote Scholar with Naomi Iizuka), and Stratford New Works Lab and has participated in Erik Ehn’s annual Texas Silent Writing Retreat.
Lisa B. Thompson is an award-winning artist, scholar, and teacher whose plays have been produced and developed by institutions such as Brava for Women in the Arts!, New Professional Theatre, The Vortex Repertory, Theatre Rhinoceros, Crossroads Theatre, Austin Playhouse, National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, South Africa, Company of Angels Theater, New African Grove Theatre Company, Black Spectrum Theatre, Montreal Fringe Festival, and the National Black Theatre Festival. Her plays include the off-Broadway show Single Black Female (LA WeeklyTheatre Award best comedy nominee), Underground (Austin Critics Table David Mark Cohen New Play Award), Monroe (Austin Playhouse Festival of New Texas Plays winner), and The Mamalogues, which will have its world premiere at Vortex Repertory Company in August 2019.
Jeanne Veillette Bowerman is the Editor-in-Chief of Script magazine, a regular columnist in Writer’s Digest magazine, and is on Stephanie Palmer’s list of “Top 10 Most Influential Screenwriting Bloggers.” She co-founded and moderates the weekly Twitter screenwriters’ chat, #Scriptchat, and wrote the narrative adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Slavery by Another Name, with its author, Douglas A. Blackmon, former senior national correspondent of The Wall Street Journal. Her take on the historical adaptation process led to her being commissioned to write a historical-fiction novel on Cesare Beccaria for The Mentoris Project. Jeanne also teaches pitching workshops at conferences across the country and consults with screenwriters, novelists, and filmmakers on how to build and strengthen their online and offline networks as well as face their fears in order to succeed, both in their art and in personal peace. www.jeannevb.com
Jackie Branson grew up in northern New Jersey. She holds a BFA from the University of New Hampshire where she studied printmaking and drawing and an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania where she studied printmaking, sculpture and digital media. She has studied art in the city of Perugia in central Italy, has held fellowships at Sculpture Space, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Millay Colony, and has received scholarships to the Vermont Studio Center and the Chautauqua Institute. Jackie primarily shows in the tri-state area and her work is held in a number of private collections. She lives and works in Pawling, New York.
Monika Burczyk graduated with a BFA from the School of the Art Institute and was an inaugural Core Fellow of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. She has experience as an administrator, fundraiser, artist, scholar and educator and was the Executive Director of Sculpture Space in Utica, New York from 2012-2016; she is also the founder of fieldgenerator arts, p roviding a range of services to both emerging and established artists. Monika has extensive experience in academia: she holds a Ph.D. from New York University and her research focuses on the creative process, public art/social practice and professional development for artists. She is the Director of External Affairs at Millay Colony.
Esperanza Cortés is a Colombian born multidisciplinary artist based in New York City. Cortes’s passion for the mosaic of the Americas, its folk art traditions, rituals, music, dance and their ever evolving changes are at the core of her sculptures, paintings, installations, site-specific projects and interventions. Her artwork examines the extent to which a consciousness, national or personal, defines itself through the opposing force of a transcultural experience. The work is poetically and intricately crafted to encourage the viewer to reconsider social and historical narratives especially when dealing with Colonialism and raises critical questions about the politics of erasure and exclusion.
Cortés is a recipient of fellowships and grants including: 2018 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship: 2018 BRIC Media Arts Fellowship: 2018 Museum of Arts and Design, Artist Studios Residency: 2017 Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Creative Engagement Grant: 2014 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant: and 2013 Puffin Foundation, Project Grant.
Michael Oatman calls his practice ‘the poetic interpretation of documents’. His collages and installations integrate thousands of found, modified and handmade components, including artifacts of material culture, painting, drawing, video, and food. These architectural ‘unvironments’ have been installed at museums, public spaces and private homes. His installations are ‘context-specific’, and demand from him a total immersion into physical location, sonic/haptic realms, local history and the personal stories of those he encounters while working. He has exhibited extensively in the US and abroad.
Oatman received his BFA from RISD, and his MFA from the University at Albany. He has taught at Harvard, UVM, UAlbany St. Michael’s College and Vermont College. He has been a visiting critic at RISD from 1986 to the present. Since 1999 he has been a faculty member in the School of Architecture at Renssealer.
Oatman offers seminars on Marcel Duchamp and Alfred Hitchcock, and specializes in studio courses where students build projects at a 1:1 scale. He teaches drawing, thesis, and helps students toward the realization of their own research. In 2004 he began working with gifted students from RPI, Skidmore, SUNY and other schools under the name of Falling Anvil Studios.
Current projects include All Utopias Fell, a permanent commission for MASS MoCA, open until October 2020.