New Diversity Fellowship at MacDowell Colony

An anonymous $200,000 gift will [hopefully] make way for greater diversity at the MacDowell Colony. The Chairman of the MacDowell Colony, Michael Chabon, announced the gift on Monday night. The fellowship is named for Charlotte Sheedy: a literary agent who represented Audre Lorde and Marilyn French. More:

The MacDowell Colony's chairman, Michael Chabon, announced a new literary fellowship Monday night designated to bring diverse voices to the artists' retreat.

The new Charlotte Sheedy Fellowship is designated for writers "representing populations across racial and cultural boundaries." It is named for literary agent Charlotte Sheedy, whose clients included Audre Lorde and Marilyn French.

Located in Peterborough, N.H., the MacDowell Colony has been hosting artists, performers and writers since 1907. At any given time, more than two dozen residents are working independently in their own fields during the day, coming together at night for dinner and conversation. Residencies last from two weeks to two months.

In a statement, Chabon explained: "Isolation, indifference, and lack of opportunity are the common lot of artists everywhere, but for an artist marginalized by cultural difference, as Charlotte Sheedy has always known, those effects are trebled by an inheritance of cruelty and injustice. They are intensified by mechanisms of discrimination both covert and plain as day. For these artists the struggle to make art takes a deeper toll and can lead to deeper despair." [...]

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