WCR WRITING FELLOWSHIP
For many writers, this is a dream: two weeks to focus on a writing project – fiction or creative nonfiction only, please – in a beautiful setting. We’ll be offering another two-week WCR Writing Fellowship in early 2023. Apply by Nov. 15, 2022.
We offer a setting of spectacular beauty sure to inspire any writer to make progress with a writing project. A visiting writing fellow 
can enjoy many hours of solitude, either in the Library House, a book-filled cabin on the verge of the forest, with no electricity or running water, where she or he will be staying (bath room and shower are in the Main House, a short walk up the hill) or a walk out 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). Additional note: Sarah and Steve live here at the Wellstone Center, along with our two young daughters, 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 in the rustic “Library House”
- food staples for a wholesome diet
- nearly uninterrupted solitude, but also group activities like yoga, hikes and OpenMic
- feedback on writing, if desired
- Internet access in the Main House
- shared bathroom a minute’s walk away
The fellowship does not include transportation expenses to come to us, and we expect people to make their own arrangements. Writing fellows are encouraged to do some work in our gardens now and then, to experience firsthand a connection with nature, and to help with the preparation of meals. We ask fellows to focus on one major writing project of fiction or creative nonfiction when they are here and to make that a high priority. We hope there is time for regular walks on the trails and of course to engage us in conversation, especially when we all read from our writing for Tuesday Night OpenMic Night. But we also encourage fellows to be single-minded about nourishing their writing; if you want to be anti-social for days at a time and spend all your time writing, that’s fine, too. Preference is given to writers with at least one published work.
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.”
To apply, please email a letter of 500 words explaining your interest in spending time at the Wellstone Center and telling us about what project you’d be working on with us; as well as a sample of the writing project you hope to focus on during your time with us, no more than 1,000 words; and some highlights of your writing and work credits. Preference will be given to writers with at least one book published with a major publisher.
Mail your application to sarah@wellstoneredwoods.org or to 858 Amigo Road, Soquel, CA 95073 to be considered.
FROM OUR PAST 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
ABOUT THE WELLSTONE CENTER
Founded in 2012 by Sarah Ringler and Steve Kettmann, the Wellstone Center in the Redwoods was named to San Francisco Magazine‘s 2013 “Best of the Bay” issue for its weekend workshops. We are a writers’ retreat that offers regular workshops and residencies; we also publish books through our Wellstone Books imprint.