The Barbara Smith Residency
The Barbara Smith Writer-in-Residence program facilitates in bringing substantive literary work by writers of color to completion for publication. It is named in honor of Cleveland’s renowned feminist, social justice activist, and LGBTQ advocate, Barbara Smith, who is also co-founder of the Combahee River Collective and The Kitchen Table Press, which published works like “This Bridge Called My Back” by Rosario Morales.
The program offers two application periods for local and national writers. Twelve Literary Arts, based in Cleveland, provides cost of travel, an apartment and a $5,000 stipend to national writers. Writers selected for the 1-3 month residency have the support of TLA staff and community partners through mentorship, peer editing, and public readings and salons, writers undergo an immersive experience.
Residents
Meet the former and current residents of the Barbara Smith Writer-in-Residence program
2021
2020
She is the author of three full-length poetry collections: Ex Nihilo (Frontenac House, 2010), which became a finalist for the Dylan Thomas Prize, Terra Incognita (Inanna Publications, 2015), which was nominated for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award, and The Unmooring, published in 2018 by Mansfield Press. Adebe begins her residency in December 2019.
In the past year, Elizabeth was a Finalist for the Creative Capital Award, the Oxford American Jeff Baskin Writers Fellowship, and the Mary C. Mohr Nonfiction Award. She is a 2019 MacDowell Fellow, and her essays have appeared in publications such as Callaloo and Solstice Literary Magazine.
She currently lives in the Pittsburgh area with her husband and two young children. Her first book, a work of nonfiction entitled “Sleeping in the Fire: The Black Artist in America,” is in progress. Elizabeth begins her residency in March 2020.
2019
In the 2019-2020 theatrical season she is the Nord Foundation Playwriting Fellow and Catapult Artist at Cleveland Public Theatre and the Barbara Smith Writer in Residence at Twelve Literary Arts, Inc.
Quartez extended his residency with Twelve Literary Arts, becoming a Baldwin House Urban Writing resident, Quartez will become the first poet to publish with Twelve Arts Press in 2020.