MARY C. CURTIS FELLOWSHIP
When the accomplished journalist Mary C. Curtis visited for two weeks in early 2019 to work on a book proposal, it was a revelation for us as much as it was for her: We’ve mostly hosted writers working on books, fiction and memoir, but this can also be a good spot to make a big push on a book proposal. Two weeks of focus in a tranquil, beautiful corner of California has its plus sides especially for longtime adrenaline fiends used to powering through deadlines but not as used to unpacking a deeper perspective. Mary’s still working on her book, part memoir, part social history-new chapters keep presenting themselves all the time-and we’ll help spread the word when it appears. For 2021 we’re inaugurating a two-week fellowship in Mary’s name here at our small writers’ retreat center in Northern California, specifically for an African American journalist with a minimum of five years experience looking to spend two weeks intensively working on a proposal for a well developed book project.
Curtis, an award-winning columnist for Roll Call, talks politics regularly on WCCB-TV in Charlotte, N.C., where she lives. She focuses on the intersection of politics, culture and race.
A former editor at publications including The New York Times, the Charlotte Observer, the Baltimore Sun, Arizona Daily Star and Associated Press, she was a 2006 Nieman Fellow at Harvard and was chosen for the Kiplinger Program in Public Affairs, journalism’s first social media fellowship, at Ohio State in 2011. She is a Senior Facilitator with The OpEd Project, at Yale University, Cornell University and the Ford Foundation, and has contributed to NBC, the Washington Post “She the People” blog, The Root, NPR, Women’s Media Center, MSNBC.
Mary has the first essay in Wellstone Books’ December 2020 collection Now What? The Voters Have Spoken-Essays on Life After Trump, distributed nationally through Ingram.
A visiting writing fellow can enjoy many hours of solitude, staying in either the Glass House (left), the Pool House or the Zen Suite, and can unwind with walks on our private trails through the redwoods or elsewhere on our 4.7 acres of beautiful land, four miles up from the Pacific Ocean near Santa Cruz, California. Twice a week we have morning yoga or a group hike, and on Tuesday night the visiting writer reads at OpenMic night. The visiting writing fellow can also enjoy 
joining the permanent residents of the WCR for our delicious common meals, prepared with fresh fruit and vegetables from our own organic gardens and eggs from our hens. We bake bread regularly and provide fellows with fresh fruit and vegetables and all the basic staples for breakfast, lunch and dinner (for special requests, like decaffeinated coffee or almond milk, we’re happy to take fellows to a local market where they can buy some provisions on their own).
One note for 2021: Co-directors Sarah and Steve live here at the Wellstone Center, along with our two young daughters, who will turn five and seven this year, and as much as we endeavor to keep the noise level down, writers with a strong aversion to the presence of small children in the vicinity might not find our setting ideal.
Here are the basics:
- two weeks of undistracted writing
- private accommodations
- food staples for a wholesome diet
- nearly uninterrupted solitude, but also group activities like yoga, hikes and OpenMic
- feedback on writing, if desired
The fellowship does not include transportation expenses to come to us, and we expect people to make their own arrangements. We wish we had a budget for that, but we just don’t.
Criteria: Send us a four-page (1,000 word) excerpt from the book you are writing and a two-page (500 word) pitch on the project, keeping in mind that the publishing industry is in a state of flux and what used to be called midlist titles can be very hard to sell to a publisher. We want to be a catalyst to help bring forward projects with sales potential and a strong chance of finding a wide audience. That’s part of workshopping a proposal. We want to help writers land a book deal with a good publisher ready to push the book. Journalism experience: We are looking for experienced reporters with a minimum of five years’ job experience (print, online, radio, TV, etc.). Please briefly outline your work experience in a one-page cover letter and make a case for why you think you would be a good fit here at the end of Amigo Road.
Mail your application to sarah@wellstoneredwoods.org to be considered. Deadline: June 1, 2021.
About us: Writing on the front page of the Santa Cruz Sentinel in 2015 , Wallace Baine said the Wellstone Center in the Redwoods is “kind of like heaven” for writers. “Put yourself, for a moment, in the shoes of Michael Weinreb, the most recent writer-in-residence at Wellstone,” Baine wrote. “During his month-long stay, he woke every morning in a serene and cozy cottage surrounded by books. From his small front porch, he could gaze west over the treeline at the glistening ocean in the distance. … He could also wander through the fragrant, redwood-thick acreage, lost in daydreamy contemplation or creative focus. In between, ideally, he would find a comfortable perch with his writing tools of choice, and write.”
FROM WCR FELLOWS
I did not immediately start work on my novel-in-progress. Instead a short story I had been gestating for a while emerged within one week of the start of the residency. I found time to read two slim books by Gabriel García Marquez from the Library House, a wooden house on the edge of the mountains which became my home for about a month. In a way the Library House is a Library with a bed so I was surrounded by amazing collections of Hemingway, Evelyn Waugh, Carl Hiaasen and books by TC Boyle, John Irving and Anna Akhmatova. It was at the Library House that I found the book The Writing Life which affected me deeply. I pored over the essays and interviews by America’s most honored authors. I saw through their eyes and in many ways identified with their pains, hopes, aspirations and fears. I was humbled by the fact that the authors I read and admired were not without shortcomings. They were writers like me
I relished the daily the communal evening meals where we traded real-life stories and talked about ridiculous things. I asked questions. I asked annoying questions. I made friends. I gathered stories that I would process into fiction someday. My most productive times were the times I embraced the unforeseen, and relieved myself of all responsibility for my creative outcome. At Wellstone I experienced the unexpected. That was what I needed and now I can say that I am on the road to recovery. Wellstone gave me wings to fly.
– Samuel Kolawole, May 2015 WCR Fellow, who came to us from Nigeria.
The strange thing is the Library House seems much bigger from inside than it does from the outside. This could be the way it’s set in a hollow, with the hillside running down from its deck. Or it could be the view – you look out over a forest of trees that leads straight to the ocean. Or maybe it feels big because of all the words waiting here. Encouraging words from Anne Lamott, advising us to just sit down, hammer out that Shitty First Draft, don’t worry, just type. Words from Ann Packer, who asks whether we can take care of those who rely on us and take care of our creative selves at the same time. Words from Walt Whitman:
Facing west from California’s shores,
Inquiring, tireless, seeking what is yet unfound.
That’s all of us, seeking what is yet unfound. Some do this on canvas, looking for the clear, true colors that mark our time here. Those of us who love the Library House put down words, and know they fall far from the mark. But still, we put down words.
When my fingers refuse to assemble what I need, when every letter I strike is wrong, when I’m afraid of looking foolish, of wasting time, of not being enough, then I imagine the words to come. Not from me. From the people who will stay here, who will love this view and this room built around books as much as I do. Although we write in solitude, none of us are here alone.
– Ann Krueger Spivack, November 2014 WCR Fellow
It’s been a week since I left the Wellstone Center in the Redwoods, where I spent the month of July living and working in the Library House as the Wellstone’s inaugural writing fellow. During these past seven days many people have asked me to describe my experience there. I tell them, of course, about how much progress I made on my book, about my simple, beautiful cabin and the power of solitude as a creative conduit. I came to the Wellstone to write, and write I did. But I left the Wellstone with more than a fistful of chapters. I left as part of a creative community, a community of dreamers and strivers dedicated to nourishing mind, body, and spirit with, simply put, what matters. Ideas and encouragement. Garden vegetables and fresh goat’s milk. Hikes through the forest. Honest conversation. Progress can be measured in many ways, and I measure mine in terms of words written, to be sure, but also bonds forged. I don’t know how I got so lucky. I do know how much I’m looking forward to going back.
– Joan Anderman, August 2014 WCR Fellow