Inaugural Willa Cather Residency for Writers

Announcing the Inaugural Cohort in the Willa Cather Residency for Writers

May 16, 2023

The National Willa Cather Center is pleased to announce members of the first cohort of writers in the Willa Cather Residency for Writers in Red Cloud, Nebraska. The program will be held October 15-29, 2023, and is part of a year-long celebration of Willa Cather’s 150th birthday.

“We were delighted by the enormous response and outstanding applications,” said Ashley Olsen, Executive Director. “The task of selecting five writers was difficult given the astonishing talent and unique voices of the applicants.”

The Willa Cather Residency for Writers aims to inspire new work by writers. The 2023 cohort includes:

Joanna Biggs

Joanna Biggs explores the intellectual, creative and romantic possibilities for women’s lives outside of motherhood and marriage. She is a senior editor at Harper’s Magazine and her book of essays about women writers, A Life of One’s Own: Nine Women Writers Begin Again, was published in May, 2023. (Photo credit: Hillery Stone)

Monica Masiello

Monica Masiello is a poet who explores the voices, desires, power imbalances, and identities of women and immigrant families in the United States. She was raised in San Jose, California, and has worked in politics and as a community organizer.

Karen Rankin-Baransky

Karen Rankin-Baransky writes about the environment and is passionate about the issue of climate change and biodiversity loss, particularly through the lens of how humans view their relationship with nature. Working as a biologist, she has researched humpback whales and loggerhead sea turtles, and currently monitors a pair of peregrine falcons that nest a few miles upstream from her home on the Delaware River.

Richard Scott Larson

Richard Scott Larson writes about the lingering effects of the closet for queer people in a climate where the dominant narrative often overlooks childhood experiences of shame, fear, and isolation. He grew up in rural Missouri but has lived in New York for two decades, where he works as a program administrator at NYU. He has recently received fellowships from MacDowell and the New York Foundation for the Arts.

Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum

Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum is the author of three collections of short fiction, most recently What We Do with the Wreckage (UGA Press, 2018), which won the 2017 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. Her short fiction has been widely published in journals, and she has been the recipient of a PEN/O. Henry Prize and fellowships from MacDowell and the Jack Straw Writers Program. She teaches writing and lives with her family near Seattle.