Olá from ORTO, 20 minutes outside Porto, Portugal! This is my 34th-ish artists’ residency and totally unique. The place is like a mullet — in the front it looks like a village house, but walk through a 19th-century stone archway, and the back opens to a courtyard, gardens and fields with chickens, a dog-and-goose best-friend pair, a cat, sheep, and pigs, fruiting plum and orange trees, open-air studios, and a climbing vine that smells just like jasmine.
I’m here with Elmaz Abinader. (We wrote about what it means to be writing partners who don’t write together here.) My first couple of nights, I stayed in the newly renovated wing above the stone stables, which was giving Monastic Chic; later I joined Elmaz in a Shabby Chic farmhouse apartment, where we share a kitchen with the happiest baby-in-residence ever (yes, an artist brought her 10-month-old!). Workaway volunteers cook the meals we eat together at a long outdoor table. On weekends we’ve been exploring nearby beach and mountain towns.
The wild thing: prior to coming, I kept getting reminders that exactly 7 years ago I’d been in Porto to walk the Camino de Santiago. When I got here, things looked eerily familiar — turns out the residency is on the Camino! Even wilder, my first day I got an email from a British editor asking me to write about the Camino.
The class I love teaching is back, and the results speak for themselves: since last year, one graduate has been accepted to both Ragdale and Community of Writers, and another to the Nawat Fes residency in Morocco.
Most writers assume residencies are for other people — the already-connected, the already-published. The application feels mysterious and competitive. But the reality is that selection committees are actively seeking diverse voices and fresh perspectives. The biggest barrier isn’t your qualifications; it’s knowing how to translate your unique story into application language that resonates with reviewers.
Drawing on 30+ residencies attended and years judging applications, I’ll walk you through actual winning applications. We’ll draft and workshop your own artist statement and project description, learning to frame your background as an asset rather than a deficit. You’ll leave with polished materials, a targeted residency list, and concrete strategies for making the most of the experience once you’re accepted.
Thursdays, July 16 + July 23, 7–9 PM PDT, via Zoom. $195.
Stonecoast Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing, in partnership with Black Travel Maine, is thrilled to launch the Stonecoast Writers’ Lab, a 3-day immersive writing workshop in Portland, ME — June 19–22. The theme of this summer’s Lab is Refuge.
Beginning on Juneteenth, through generative workshops, readings, community salons, and excursions, participants will examine how refuge and its many interpretations (i.e., physical, emotional, contextual, and spiritual) are shaped by memory, migration, place, and belonging. I’ll be teaching “Unseen, Unheard, Uncovered: Revealing and Reclaiming Voices” on Sunday, June 21, 8:15–9:15 AM.
And if you’re in Portland, Alex Jennings, John Florio, and I will be the faculty readers at the Stonecoast MFA opening night: Friday, June 19, 7:30 PM, 102 Wishcamper Center, University of Southern Maine, Portland.
In March I had the pleasure of teaching a workshop on place with Travelers Tales co-founder Larry Habegger at the O’ahu Writers Retreat; now I’m psyched to start promoting their latest The Best Women’s Travel Writing, Volume 13, edited by the incomparable Lavinia Spalding.
My essay “Tenderheaded,” which originally appeared in Panorama’s INTIMACY issue, was selected from 1,600+ submissions, alongside my former VONA travel writing students Adriana Páramo and Christina Brobby, teaching collaborators Pier Nirandara (a guest in my Off/Assignment Rethinking Travel Writing workshop last fall) and Paulette Perhach, Panorama contributors Kristin Winet and Lisa VanderVeen, and literary heavy-hitters Susan Orlean and Roxane Gay.
Virtual Launch Party — Tuesday, June 9, 5 PM PST / 8 PM ET. Join editor Lavinia Spalding and contributors for readings, toasts, and a celebration of women’s travel writing. Free and open to all. Register here.
📍 P&T Knitwear, New York City — June 13, 7 PM. Lavinia will be introducing the collection with five contributors: Paulette Perhach, Marcia DeSanctis, Caletha Crawford, Theresa Lin, and Marta Hanson.
📍 Elliott Bay Books, Seattle — July 18, 7 PM, 1521 10th Ave, Seattle, WA. I will be presenting with Marta Hanson, and Paulette Perhach.
📍 Book Passage, Corte Madera — August 6, 6 PM, 51 Tamal Vista Blvd, Corte Madera, CA. The evening before the annual Travel Writers & Photographers Conference, I will join Lavinia and others for a reading. Open to the public; if attending the conference, RSVP to save your seat.
My friend Mildred Thompson had her story “Ghana: Finding My People” published in Panorama, and editor Matthew Webb highlighted it in his introduction to the REFLECTIONS issue. As it’s her first publication, I said she had to celebrate. So she’s hosting a gathering of authors and scholars who write about Africa: Saturday, July 25 | Oakland, CA | INVITATION ONLY.
Presenters include Nancy Fairley (Professor Emerita of Anthropology, Davidson College), Opal Palmer Adisa (author of 15+ books; former University Director, Institute for Gender and Development Studies, UWI), and Elaine Lee (travel journalist; editor and publisher of Go Girl: The Black Woman’s Book of Travel and Adventure), and me.
Panorama: The Journal of Travel, Place, and Nature is now accepting submissions for Issue 18: BELONGING. We publish every genre you could imagine, but here’s the call for my section, Decolonising Travel:
We seek essays, audio stories, narrative maps, comics, graphs, and other forms that reimagine what it means to belong — and to be made to feel that one does not — while travelling. We’re interested in stories that move beyond tourism’s fantasy of frictionless welcome to explore who is granted belonging where, and on whose terms.
Of particular interest: belonging claimed through diaspora return; indigenous relationships to land that predate and survive colonial remapping; the temporary belonging of the tourist versus the permanent unbelonging of the displaced; and stories that ask who gets to feel at home in the world — and who is made to carry their unbelonging in their body. As always, we prioritise writing from the global majority and other marginalised voices.
Deadline: June 14, 2026. Completed works, preferably 1,000–3,000 words. IMPORTANT: Include a short bio and introduction to the work in your cover letter.
LAUNCH TOMORROW! Jasmine Kelekay | Black Feminist Sociology: Perspectives and Praxis, 2nd Edition, co-edited with Zakiya Luna and Whitney N. Laster Pirtle (Routledge). This landmark volume gathers writings by established and emerging scholars working in a Black feminist tradition — critical, personal, political, and oriented toward social justice. Jasmine (Assistant Professor of Sociology and Criminology at Howard University) co-edited this expanded and essential second edition. Get it.
Virtual Launch: Thursday, June 4, 2026, 3:00-4:30 PM EDT
Tamiko Nimura | A Place for What We Lose: A Daughter’s Return to Tule Lake (University of Washington Press). Tamiko’s long-awaited memoir is here! Part memoir, part intergenerational dialogue, it braids passages from her late father’s unpublished memoir of growing up in California’s Tule Lake Japanese-American concentration camp with her own return journey. A gut-wrenching, necessary, and beautiful book.
Anne Liu Kellor | Mixed Roots: Writers on Multiracial Identity & Both/And Belonging (Beacon Press, October 13, 2026). My popular manifesto, “Dear Biracial/Multiracial/Mixed Girl,” which originally appeared in Dear Black Girl, has been selected for this exciting anthology. Pre-order now! Events are in the works — look for me at Medicine for Nightmares and in Portland this fall.
My friend and collaborator Paulette Perhach is hosting How to Finally Finish and Publish Your Half-Written Story, a free five-day live event for memoirists and essayists. By Day 5, every attendee will have sent a real pitch to a national editor (eek!): June 22–26, 12–1 PM ET daily, free on Zoom. I will be joining Paulette’s team as a coach, so check it out!
Paid subscribers: Office hours link is in the subscriber chat — drop in and let’s talk through your plans for world domination! If you’re not yet a paid subscriber and want 1:1 access, you can upgrade below…
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