Co-founder of the award-winning independent publisher SOHO Press, Laura Hruska was also an attorney and novelist who published under her maiden name, Laura Chapman. A lifelong lover of books and story, Laura discovered talented writers who have gone on to have long and productive careers, including MacArthur Fellow Edwidge Danticat and best-selling mystery writers Cara Black and Jacqueline Winspear, to name a few. The Laura Hruska Fellowship is open to writers of literary fiction, mystery fiction or young adult fiction. The winner will be chosen based on a combination of a strong voice, compelling story and quality writing. Please submit thirty to fifty pages of your novel, a rough synopsis and a list of any writing awards, citations, credits or residencies, as well as up-to-date contact information for three references who can talk about you and your work. Deadline to apply:  Current unavailable, but hope to offer in late 2020. Mail your application materials, along with a cover letter explaining why you think you would be a good fit for a Wellstone Center in the Redwoods residency, to sarah@wellstoneredwoods.org and please put “Hruska Fellowship” in the subject heading. The fellow will come to the Wellstone Center for two weeks in October, November or early 2019, the specific dates to be determined.

Located at the Wellstone Center in the Redwoods in the heart of the Santa Cruz Mountains, run by Sarah Ringler and best-selling author Steve Kettmann, the fellowship provides a room and evening meals for the selected writer for fourteen days, starting on a Monday. The writer can also participate in Wellstone offerings, including weekly yoga; our low-key Tuesday night open readings; and a Wednesday morning nature hike on the private trails extending back behind the Center into the Santa Cruz Mountains. The fellow will also receive a half-hour consultation with current Soho Press Publisher Bronwen Hruska – not a detailed manuscript discussion, but a chance to ask general questions, either in person or on the phone, depending on availability.

Writing residencies can jump-start a writer to make dramatic progress. The Wellstone Center in the Redwoods offers immersion in an environment of spectacular beauty sure to inspire any writer not only to find new directions to make progress with a writing project, but also a chance to escape the distractions of normal day-to-day life. The resident writers will stay in the Zen Suite, with a balcony looking down on the forests of the Santa Cruz Mountains and, in the distance, Monterey Bay, and a rear exit toward a grove of redwoods.

ABOUT THE WELLSTONE CENTER

Founded in 2012 by Sarah Ringler and Steve Kettmann, the Wellstone Center in the Redwoods writers’ retreat center was named to San Francisco Magazine‘s 2013 “Best of the Bay” issue and has been extolled in the San Jose Mercury News as “kind of like heaven” for writers, and in the San Francisco Chronicle as a “the kind of place where inspiration seems to just hang in the air, waiting to be inhaled,” and also featured in the Wall Street Journal and Good Times. Our books, published through our Wellstone Books imprint, have attracted attention at the New Yorker and in The New York Times.