Lannan Residency Program
Standing on the porch staring out at the sky and sometimes the pouring rain in the sky like a monsoon everything meant so much to me there. I was allowed to be an artist. I was allowed to be a writer. I wasn’t a line-cook who writes. I was just me ... I kept thinking, here I am. Don’t forget this, don’t forget this. All of this is going to go away, you know, and so to be lucky enough to have spent time under the friendly and encouraging auspices of the Lannan Foundation in a place like Marfa was like being alive twice. That’s what a student of Basho’s said about lyric poetry, it’s like being alive twice. And that’s how it was for me.
— Michael Dickman
Marfa might possibly be the perfect writer’s retreat. Remote, quiet, starkly beautiful, and equipped with just enough worldly essentials to keep one nourished without major distraction, the town almost feels like it was designed to be itself a sabbatical. I accomplished more in one month in Marfa than I have in whole semesters back home, and for this I am grateful and indebted.
— John D’Agata
The Lannan Residency Fellowship provides uninterrupted writing time for poets, writers, essayists, scholars, curators, as well as indigenous, environmental and social justice activists. Residency durations are usually from one to two months.
Since the fall of 2000, close to 200 residency fellows have been housed in Lannan properties in Marfa, Texas, a small, beautiful, high desert ranching town in West Texas near the Chinati Mountains to the southwest and the Davis Mountains to the northeast. Marfa is also home to the internationally known Chinati Foundation, a contemporary art organization founded by the late sculptor, Donald Judd.
Candidates for the residency program are selected through an internal nomination process. Unsolicited applications are not accepted.
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