We are currently accepting applications for the 2020-2021 writer-in-residence positions at the Kerouac House. The submission period will close on Sunday, March 10, 2019, and the results will be announced in late May.
It’s time to get your residency submissions in to us. All Kerouac Project fans, past residents and others, please share this with any prospects, alma mater, creative writing programs and friends who might be interested.
For all the details on how to apply to become a writer-in-residence with the Kerouac Project, visit the “Apply” page at our website KerouacProject.org
Alumni Spotlight: Andrew Newsham, Spring 2003
From time to time, different Kerouac House alumni will write in and tell us what they’ve been up to, or how their residency helped prepare them for the writing life. This month, we hear from Spring 2003 resident Andrew Newsham.
‘The Cockroaches Can Fly!’ were the first words I wrote in the Kerouac House. Four words, on a postcard to my brother. I wrote them in the back room, Jack’s room, where he wrote The Dharma Bums. I was a twenty eight year old writer with a few published short stories under my belt and big plans for big novels. I’d been published in Esquire magazine in England but it really hadn’t opened any doors, except maybe this one, the one that really meant something to me. The door to three months of writing seclusion at 1418 1/2 Clouser Ave. I’d found a lot of joy and truth in the work of Kerouac over the years.
After I graduated college in 1996 I’d even come to America and hitchhiked from NYC to San Francisco, a personal adventure and a homage to The Road. Since then I’d somehow managed to keep writing, even though it was an utterly financially unproductive endeavor and as such, difficult to maintain and much scoffed in our great culture of money. But I was a Romantic in the classic sense and also an apostle of Henry Miller and Hemingway and Jack Kerouac, writers who spoke to me deeply of personal freedom (in a Beat sense of accountability to truth and beauty, a conscious commitment to the self and the moment rather than some selfish ego trip or delusional Libertarian thing) and I knew writing was going to be an unavoidable vocation for me, for good or ill, rather than a financial decision. And the truth is… you just can’t buy the experience of ducking under a flying cockroach in Jack Kerouac’s old house. That is priceless.
It was Spring, 2003. It was me, the Kerouac house and a generous Darden Gift card to eat some dinners at Red Lobster.
Want to find out what Andrew did while he was at the Kerouac House? Want to find out how he survived the flying cockroach? You can read about it on our blog.
Sion Dayson (Winter 2014-15) is thrilled to announce that her novel, As a River, has been named one of the “15 Small Press Books To Kick Off Your 2020 Reading Season” by Buzzfeed News! They write: “Dayson has written a classic story of generational struggle and redemption.” Congratulations, Sion!
Congratulations to Sarah Viren (Winter 2015-16) who recently won the 2020 Great Lakes Colleges Association award for creative nonfiction for her book Mine: Essays. Contest judges wrote this about the book: “Viren’s essays are extremely well-crafted, and her prose beautiful. The voice is mature, full of wisdom and insight. A brilliantly rendered account of what it means to be of a place, Viren’s collection also answers what it means to be of the world and what it means, ultimately, to be here today. A ruminative, absorbing book.”
It looks like our Winter writers are really stepping up and accomplishing things. Lets hear from the rest of you and what you’re doing!
Meet a board member: Tom Lucas
Tom Lucas currently serves as Department Chair for the Creative Writing BFA degree program at Full Sail University. Born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, Tom moved to Orlando in 2010.
As an active member of the local literary community, Tom has conducted independent writing workshops as well as participating in spoken word events around town.
Tom has been published in Ghost Parachute, The Orlando Weekly, Writer’s Digest, The Writer’s Monthly Review, The South End, The Oakland Press, The Macomb Daily, Orbit, Anthropomorphic, and U. Magazine. He is the author of the books Leather to the Corinthians and Pax Titanus.
Tom Lucas currently serves as Department Chair for the Creative Writing BFA degree program at Full Sail University. Born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, Tom moved to Orlando in 2010.
