Millay House Rockland Announcements
2025-2026 Writer-in-Residence Winners
Millay House Rockland is pleased to announce Joanna Young, a poet from Searsport, Maine, will be in residence in October 2025, and William Torrey, a fiction writer and essayistfrom Richmond, Virginia, will be in residence in July 2026.
Launched on Edna St. Vincent Millay’s birthday in February 2025, the juried residency competition received submissions of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, and journalism from across the country. 12 finalists were chosen by a preliminary jury, and two Writers-in-Residence were selected by our final judge, renowned essayist Gretel Ehrlich, author of the much beloved The Solace of Open Spaces and winner of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Distinguished Prose, as well as fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Joanna and William will each offer a public reading or workshop during their month’s stay at the Millay House. Stay tuned to our newsletter for more details about these forthcoming events.
With generational roots in Vinalhaven, Maine, poet Joanna Young’s work explores the “infinity" she writes from, the midcoast landscapes that initiate her into a world of beauty, mystery, and healing. Ehrlich said of her work:
These poems are sharp-shinned, instinctive, deep, and diverse. . . yet spiced with immediate and local detail. The lines are mesmerizing yet piercing and concise. . . There’s a questing mind in these poems, reaching and touching and floundering again within what she calls, “her double helix of loss.”
William Torrey is the author of the forthcoming novella Freedom of Movement (Regal House, 2027). His short stories and essays have appeared widely in magazines such as The Missouri Review and The North American Review. A recipient of fellowships and grants from The Delaware Division of the Arts, the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, he teaches writing at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia. Of his work, Ehrlich said:
This talented writer gives us swift, light-footed prose that sweeps us into the collapse and resurgence of four men, ill-equipped to face themselves and their questions of shame and redemption, as well as the necessary ingredients and value of true friendship.
Upcoming Events
Two events are coming up this fall, local and in-person, find out more and sign up to attend in-person!
