Welcome to VCCA's community newsletter focused on keeping Fellows, staff, and supporters connected.

In honor of springtime, our "Wednesday Cider" newsletter has officially transitioned back to "Wednesday Lemonade," mirroring the in-person ritual of gatherings among Fellows in residence and VCCA staff at Mt. San Angelo over lemonade outside when it's warm and cider indoors when it's cool. We're awaiting the impending return of cows to the Mt. San Angelo meadow to count Spring officially official.

One bit of big news is that we're quickly approaching our May 15 application deadlines. Open opportunities include residencies and a number of fully-funded fellowships available for our Winter 2023 season (January through April 2023), as well as a separate application for the Wachtmeister Award, a prestigious biannual fellowship now open to established fiction writers who would be new VCCA Fellows. Application fees are lowered, and letters of reference are no longer required, so it's easier than ever to submit an application for a VCCA residency.

Starting with Spring Volunteer Day this Saturday (thanks to those who signed up to participate!), VCCA is gearing up for a full calendar of public events, both virtual and — at last! — in person. See below, and save some dates!

Also in today's newsletter, we pass along news from Fellows, recap a wonderful week for VCCA at AWP in Philadelphia, and show you a peek at Fellow Reece Camp Carter's art installation in the woods at VCCA.

Tonight at 7:30 p.m., two current VCCA Fellows will present their work to the community in the final VCCA Salon of this academic semester at Sweet Briar College.

Join Tania Yager and Rebecca Morgan Frank at the Reahard Learning Gallery at SBC's Cochran Library. This event is free and open to the public. In addition to puppetry and poetry, there will be wine and cheese!

Three recipients of VCCA's Goldfarb Family Fellowship for Creative Nonfiction — Jennifer Lunden (2022), Aurvi Sharma (2018), and Iraj Isaac Rahmim (2017) — will join together for an evening around the virtual fireplace.

Mark your calendar for Thursday, April 21, at 7:30 p.m. ET. You can watch the livestream on Facebook or YouTube.

On Sunday, May 1, from 4 to 6 p.m., the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts will open its doors for a rare look inside Fellows' studios. Talk with writers, visual artists, and composers in residence about their works in progress and creative processes. Visitors will also be welcome to take a self-guided tour of the grounds and VCCA’s extensive outdoor art collection. Light refreshments will be available.

Full vaccination and facial coverings will be required for all guests.

Celebrate VCCA's first 50 years, and help shape the next 50 years.

Joyous fundraising festivities are taking place this summer, with proceeds supporting VCCA's 50th Anniversary Fund, a new effort to fund at least 50 first-time residencies for artists of color through 2023.

When sculptor and multidisciplinary artist Reece Camp Carter was in residence at VCCA last year, she took to the woods to create four art installations that are now a part of the VCCA landscape.

Resident Fellow Paige Critcher writes of Carter's works, "What makes them so exciting to the viewer is that one can’t tell initially if what they are looking at is an act of natural assemblage. They demand a pause, a careful scrutiny, which then becomes a magical sense of having stumbled upon the sacred."

VCCA is returned from the 2022 AWP Conference & Bookfair in Philadelphia, where we had a fantastic time connecting with Fellows and spreading the word of VCCA to new friends.

Thank you to everyone who stopped by the VCCA table, gathered at Fergie's Pub, or attended a special AWP reading honoring VCCA's 50th anniversary. Graciously moderated by Christina Baker Kline, the reading featured wonderful conversation among Kline, Patricia Chao, Patricia Spears Jones, and E. Ethelbert Miller, all of whom generously discussed their residency experiences and swapped memories of time spent at VCCA over the years.

Special thanks to the VCCA Fellows Council members in attendance who helped make it all happen — Christina Chiu, Sonja Curry-Johnson, David Ebenbach, Cliff Garstang, and Carla Du Pree.

VCCA Fellow Kelly Cherry, 81, died on March 18, 2022. A novelist, poet, essayist, and former Poet Laureate of Virginia, Kelly was a wonderful person and loyal Fellow who had been in residence at VCCA twelve times from 1978 to 2013. She was one of the first Fellows at VCCA's residency program in Auvillar, France, in 2005.

Fellows, share your news. This is a way to tell the VCCA community about your work. We're always especially interested in stories about work created in connection to your VCCA residency.

Mikko Harvey's second book of poetry, Let the World Have You (House of Anansi), was published on April 5, 2022. Several poems from the book were written or edited while in residence at VCCA in May of 2019.

Congratulations to visual artist Cat Crotchett on being selected for a Golden Foundation Residency.

"While at VCCA in summer 2021, I was able to execute some of the last of 35 drawings based on Dante's Inferno. I muse about the project and several of the drawings are included in my chapter contribution to a new book put out by Harvey Miller Publishers. Reading Dante With Images: A Visual Lectura Dantis includes essays by notable scholars of Dante, as well as three illustrators, myself included."

An open letter from Writers for Democratic Action asks writers participating in readings to: "Ask your hosts to provide voter registration cards and information, either through Book the Vote or the local board of elections. Tell your readers that voting is essential, that you plan to vote on the next election day (or early, or by mail), and that you want to help others get registered too."

🧡 Stay safe, and be well.

Want to stay in touch with VCCA, just not on a monthly basis? Simply reply to this email to let us know, and we'll understandingly unsubscribe you from this particular email list.