Jack Kerouac
The Kerouac Project Supports Writers Through Residency
And other programs that seek to enrich the greater Orlando community.
What’s happening at The Kerouac House
A Message from Our President
Check out the letter from our president, Janna Benge, where she outlines an exciting new focus at the Kerouac Project of Orlando, Inc. this year and how you can become involved in it. You can find her letter here.
Kerouac Project Coronavirus Update
Please be advised that due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic in Florida we are currently not conducting any tours of the Kerouac House.
Near Miss at the Kerouac House
A huge oak tree limb (girth 125 inches) fell and slightly damaged the roof of the Kerouac House front porch. Thankfully, our current writer-in-residence Tanya Grae wasn’t home at the time, and no one was injured. (Check out the video clip below.)
The incident is a timely reminder of how quickly things can change. The tree—a Live Oak that Jack Kerouac called “Grandfather”—is about 250 years old. The 100-year-old Kerouac House where Jack lived and wrote for a time sits beneath the tree and needs some major TLC. The house’s foundations need to be replaced to keep it strong and in place for another 100 years. If you’d like to make a gift to support The Kerouac Project as we move forward raising the money needed to undertake this project, click here to be taken to the Donate page on our website.
Current Resident Kerouac Writers
Fall
David Morgan O’Connor
David Morgan O’Connor is an Irish-Canadian writer based in Barcelona. He has an MFA from University College Dublin & the University of New Mexico. A contributing reviewer for Rhino Poetry and fiction editor at Bending Genres, his work has appeared in Splonk, A New Ulster, Crannog, Opossum, The New Quarterly, The Irish Times, Best New…
Winter
Nita Noveno
Nita Noveno is a writer and educator in NYC. She is a graduate of The New School MFA Creative Writing Program and the founder and host of Sunday Salon, a long-running reading series in the Big Apple (and online:sundaysalon.com). She is also the founder and editor of the literary journal, SalonZine. Her work has appeared…
Spring
Jo-Ann Yeoh
Yeoh Jo-Ann grew up in Malaysia and lives in Singapore. Her first novel, Impractical Uses of Cake, won the Epigram Books Fiction Prize 2018 and in 2020, her story Dog Tiger Horse won the Boston Review’s Aura Estrada Short Story Contest. She is currently working on her second novel and a collection of short stories on…
Summer
Rachel Kolman
Rachel Kolman is a nonfiction writer and freelancer currently living in Philadelphia. Her essays and articles have been published widely across the web, appearing in Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan, Bustle, Her Story, Autofocus, Sinkhole, Tech Viral, and others. She also has fiction in Ghost Parachute, Other Orlandos, Whiskey Paper, Bodega Literary Magazine, and Unmanned Press. Rachel is an editor, teacher, and literary…
Kerouac Project Residency Application
The Kerouac Project provides four residencies a year to writers of any stripe or age, living anywhere in the world. Each residency consists of approximately a three month stay in the cottage where Jack Kerouac wrote his novel Dharma Bums. Utilities and a food stipend of $1,000 are included. All you are required to do is work on your writing project and participate in three events while a resident—a Welcome Potluck dinner for you; a Final Reading of your work at the Kerouac House at the end of your residency; and give a public reading at Valencia College. Should you desire them, the Kerouac Project can also offer opportunities for you to participate in other readings around the community, lead workshops, and interact in other ways with the vibrant Central Florida literary community.
We will begin accepting applications/submissions for 2022-2023 residencies on January 1, 2022