Register May 1, 2018 | Submit May 1, 2018 |
Urban Wild Writer Residency
Call for Proposals
BRIEF
Urban Omnibus announces a new opportunity for an Urban Wild Writer in partnership with NYC Parks and the Freshkills Park Alliance. Thoreau explored wilderness in earshot of a commuter train and walking distance from his mother’s house. Rachel Carson plumbed the biodiversity of suburbia. We seek a writer to explore and interpret the contemporary urban landscape where highways meet gas wells, herons, and kayakers.
This new and unique experience for one writer-in-residence will take place at the 2,200 acre closed landfill on Staten Island that will become the second-largest public park in New York City. This writing residency seeks to bring a first-hand perspective to topics that include the environment, technology, urban life, nature, and waste. One writer will gain personal access to the diverse ecosystems present in the unopened park in late summer, 2018. The writer will produce a work of creative nonfiction engaging with the contemporary metropolitan landscape to be published online by Urban Omnibus in the fall of 2018. The residency is designed to be short, flexible, and out of doors.
SCHEDULE
Applications are due May 1, 2018 at 11:59pm
AWARDS
The five day residency may take place continuously over the course of a week, or over multiple weekends or days from August to September 2018. The resident will receive a stipend of $1,000 USD. The residency will additionally reimburse up to $500 in travel and accommodation expenses as necessary; hotel accommodation is available near the Park and local transportation can be arranged. Freshkills Park will provide transportation from the Staten Island Ferry or Lower Manhattan to and around the interior of the Park.
JURY
A panel of jurors will select the writer-in-residence: writer Garnette Cadogan, editor-at-large of Non-Stop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas and author of “Walking While Black”; writer Robert Sullivan, author of The Meadowlands, Rats, and The Thoreau You Don’t Know; landscape architect Gena Wirth, Design Principal at SCAPE; and representatives of Urban Omnibus and Freshkills Park. The writer will be notified in early June, and the residency will take place over four to five days in August and/or September; depending on the writer’s proposal the five days could be continuous or spread out over several weeks. Urban Omnibus will publish the finished work of creative nonfiction online in the fall.
WEBSITE
https://urbanomnibus.net/2018/03/call-proposals-urban-wild-writer-residency/