Millay House Rockland announces month-long writing residency opportunity
ROCKLAND — Millay House Rockland, in partnership with the Ellis Beauregard Foundation, will offer a one-month, juried residency in October 2024. The competitive application is open to writers of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, plays, or journalism; the residency offers comfortable accommodations in the house where Pulitzer-Prize-winning poet Edna St. Vincent Millay was born.
The Millay House Rockland Writing Residency will give a writer the month of October 2024 to write, plus a stipend of $1,200 for food or other expenses. The writer will be expected to give one public event – a reading, a workshop, or a conversation with students. Applicants must be U.S. citizens and at least 21 years old.
“The Millay House is pleased to have the distinguished poet and memoirist, Mark Doty, to make this year’s final selection, following a pre-jurying process that engages a small committee of writers, professors, and publishers to screen the submissions,” said Millay House Rockland, in a news release.
Mark Doty has been recognized as one of the most accomplished poets in America, and his poetry and non-fiction writing have received numerous awards, according to Millay House.
The application deadline is April 1, 2024, however submissions this year are capped at the first 100 to be received. Applications, including 25 double-spaced pages of prose or 10 pages of poetry and a brief outline of the project planned for the residency, must be submitted electronically via: www.millayhouserockland.org/residency.
Submissions will open on Edna St. Vincent Millay’s birthday – February 22, 2024.
The winner will be announced July 1, 2024.
Millay lived in this house in Rockland for the first six months of her life, and then her family moved to Union, Maine, until Edna was eight, when her mother got a divorce and moved her three daughters to Camden.
“t was important to preserve the literary landmark in Rockland, because few of the houses where the Millays lived still exist, and because in 1935 State historian Edward K. Gould persuaded the Woman’s Educational Club of Rockland to place a bronze plaque on the house to mark the birthplace of ‘the loveliest voice in American Poetry,’” said Millay House.
In the 1920s and ‘30s, Edna St. Vincent Millay toured the country reading her poetry to standing-room-only crowds. She was the most popular woman in America.
“It is amazing that a small, blue-collar, seacoast town could produce such talent!” said the release.
Today, Rockland, Maine, combines a historically significant working waterfront with a flourishing art scene. The Millay House has been recently renovated and is graciously furnished with a fully equipped kitchen and off street parking. Downtown Rockland is in easy walking distance. There one finds an array of art galleries and museums, restaurants and coffee shops, a library and bookstores, the Harbor Trail, a boatbuilding school, windjammer cruises, ferry service to the islands, and a weekly farmers market. Learn more about The Millay House at www.millayhouserockland.org.