My first book was born at a writing residency—where uninterrupted time and a supportive community of other creatives helped me push past the stuck places. Many reputable residencies are fully (or near-fully) funded, with applications cycles throughout the year. They’re often seeking a mix of emerging, midcareer and established writers, and they’re not just for novelists with book deals or poets with M.F.A. degrees.

Writing residencies are for historians drafting narrative nonfiction, scientists experimenting with essays and scholars from a range of disciplines learning how to translate research into public argument. Some offer cabins in the woods; others provide desks in city centers. Some fund you generously; others offer subsistence while releasing you from your daily routine. All make the implicit suggestion that your writing deserves focused attention.

In this spirit, here is a curated list of 32 residencies that can fuel your 2026 writerly dreams. Imagine what might be possible if you give your writing space to breathe.

Classic Writing Residencies Open to Scholar-Writers

Typical length: 1–4 weeks

These residencies offer strong name recognition and immersive time to write, usually without teaching or service obligations.

• MacDowell: (Peterborough, N.H.) For artists, writers, composers, filmmakers and more. Known for private studios and communal dinners that balance solitude with conversation.

• Yaddo: (Saratoga Springs, N.Y.) For writers, visual artists, composers and performance artists. A storied estate set on 400 acres where generations of writers have retreated to focus on new work.
• Jentel: (Banner, Wyo.) For emerging and established artists, writers and composers. Small cohorts and big skies for writers who want literal and figurative distance from daily life.
• Art Omi: (Ghent, N.Y.) An international, cohort-based residency that brings together writers, artists, dancers, musicians and architects from around the world for shared meals and exchange.
• Millay Arts: (Austerlitz, N.Y.) Located at the former home of Edna St. Vincent Millay, this residency combines solitude with literary lineage in the rural Hudson Valley.

Short-Term Residencies

Typical length: 1–8 weeks

• Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (Amherst, Va., and Auvillar, France): Offers flexible residencies across disciplines, with rural U.S. and European options. Known for a welcoming, interdisciplinary community.
• Kimmel Harding Nelson Center (Nebraska City, Neb.): A quiet, supportive residency offering private studios, housing and stipends—described by one resident as “complete freedom and unstructured time.”
• PLAYA (Summer Lake, Ore.): For writers and artists working at the intersection of art, science and the environment. Remote “living desert lab” makes it ideal for deep focus.
• Monson Arts (Monson, Me.): Combines residency with opportunities to engage locally, appealing to writers who enjoy a balance of solitude and small-community life.

Residencies With Attached Libraries

Typical length: one semester to one academic year

These programs are especially suited to scholars working on book-length projects.

• Stanford Humanities Center External Faculty Fellowships (Stanford University): For scholars across academic ranks and independent researchers working on humanities-based projects. Provides time, space and a serious intellectual community.
• National Humanities Center (Research Triangle Park, N.C.): Offers monthlong, semester-long and yearlong residential fellowships with no teaching obligations. Particularly strong for scholars completing major manuscripts.
• American Academy of Art and Sciences (Cambridge, Mass.): For public intellectuals working on projects of broad significance. Emphasizes interdisciplinary exchange.
• Folger Institute (Washington, D.C): For scholars at all career stages, including independent researchers. Ideal for historically grounded projects that engage with primary sources.

Themed Residencies

Typical length: 2–8 weeks

These residencies gather writers and scholars around shared topics—often with an explicit public mission.

• Mesa Refuge (Point Reyes Station, Calif.): For writers working on environmental and climate-related projects. Short, focused residencies with a strong tradition of public-minded work. (Conservationist and writer Terry Tempest Williams is an alum.)
• Santa Fe Art Institute (Santa Fe, N.M.): Themed residencies focused on critical social and cultural issues, bringing together artists and thinkers from around the world.
• Banff Center for Arts and Creativity (Alberta, Canada): Offers a wide range of themed programs for writers working across genres and disciplines, set in the Canadian Rockies.

English-Friendly Residencies Beyond U.S. Borders

Typical length: 1–4 weeks

These residencies are suited for scholars craving exposure to transnational conversations.

• UNESCO City of Literature Residencies (Numerous global cities): Many UNESCO Cities of Literature (e.g. Nanjing, Bucheon, Wonju, Beirut, Montevideo, Melbourne and others) participate in exchange residency opportunities that can include travel support and accommodation through the global network, depending on the year and funding cycle. Track open calls through the UNESCO Cities of Literature site, which can surface new funded options.
• LOATAD Black Atlantic Residency (Ghana): For writers whose work engages with African or African diaspora contexts. Draws attention to the ways scholars are “disrupting ideas of Africa in the world and re/creating the meaning of Africa.”
• Bellagio Center (Rockefeller Foundation, Lake Como, Italy): Monthlong residencies that bring together scholars, artists and practitioners. They ask, “Where else could an economist, a painter, an astrophysicist and a poet work together to address the most pressing issues of our time?”
• Hawthornden Castle (Scotland): A medieval castle offering quiet, contemplative residencies for writers working independently. Breakfast and dinner are shared; lunch is delivered so as not to disrupt your routine.
• Sangam House (India): A warm, community-oriented residency, with an emphasis on exchange across cultures and genres. They welcome published writers who have not yet enjoyed substantial commercial success.

Urban and Suburban Residencies (No Isolation Required)

Typical length: One month to one year

For writers who thrive amid noise rather than silence.

• Arts Center at Governor’s Island (New York City): A flexible residency model offering studio space, peer exchange and professional development rather than seclusion.
• Headlands Center for the Arts (Sausalito, Calif.): Residencies emphasize exchange, experimentation and public engagement alongside focused creative time.
• Loghaven Artist Residency (Knoxville, Tenn.): City-adjacent, though on 90 wooded acres, serving artists, writers and scholars, including collaborative groups.

Rural Residencies

Typical length: One week to two months

For those who pine for quiet, slowness and distance from email.

• Blue Mountain Center (Blue Mountain Lake, N.Y.): Wi-Fi–free residency in the Adirondacks, focused on supporting writers, artists and activists who produce transformative work for their times. Encourages residents to choose the rhythm they need, whether collaboration or solitude.
• Ox-bow Artists’ Residency (Saugatuck, Mich.): For writers and artists across disciplines, known for a strong peer culture, access to Lake Michigan landscapes and balance of independence and shared meals.
• Byrdcliffe Artist-in-Residence (Woodstock, N.Y.): Communal and individual residencies that emphasize quiet, craft and nature walks as much as productivity.
• Djerassi Resident Artist Program (Woodside, Calif.): Long tradition of supporting artistic risk-taking, set on a 583-acre ranch in Northern California’s Santa Cruz Mountains.

Residencies for Senior Scholars with Long CVs

Typical length: One or more years

These opportunities are sometimes overlooked by academics who no longer see themselves as “applicants,” but they explicitly welcome established voices.

• Guggenheim Fellowship: Flexible funding that allows recipients to work wherever they choose. Ideal for midcareer or senior scholars pursuing ambitious, self-directed writing projects.
• Radcliffe Fellowship (Harvard Radcliffe Institute): For artists, scholars and public intellectuals. Yearlong fellowships with generous funding and an interdisciplinary cohort. “Projects range from the poetic to the cosmic.”
• Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton, N.J.): For scholars across disciplines whose work promises originality and significance. Famously intense intellectual community with remarkable freedom.
• American Academy in Berlin (Germany): Semester-long fellowships for senior scholars, writers and public intellectuals working on projects that address pressing global issues, such as the future of democracy, technology and society and more.

Many of the residencies on this list could comfortably sit in more than one category, and many worthy programs are missing simply because of space. Let the list function less as a directory than as a prompt. If none of these residencies quite fit your needs, consider what does. Is it duration, location, funding community? Use that clarity to search more widely.

You need not apply to all of these. You might apply to one or two. And while it can be tempting to think of a residency as an indulgence, it may be more accurate to see it as a temporary reordering of time, space and attention that makes public writing possible. For scholars committed to sharing their work beyond the academy, that kind of support is often the condition that allows the work to happen.

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