By Katy Yocom, Spalding School of Writing Associate Director for Communications and Alumni Relations
Last week, I wrote up all the details we could announce about our Paris residency, July 6-16, 2020. This week I’m back with final details, including travel costs and an innovative new workshop focused on professional writing.
If you read last week’s blog post, you already know that our Summer 2020 residency takes us to Paris, where we’ll stay at the Hotel André Latin in the heart of the city, not far from Luxembourg Gardens and the Pantheon.
Rodin Museum
Residencies abroad balance classroom learning with cultural experiences. Our guided excursions in Paris include an opening-night dinner cruise on the Seine, visits to the Rodin Museum and Musée d’Orsay, a Black history tour in and around Luxembourg Gardens, an excursion to Monet’s gardens at Giverny, a performance of Mozart’s Cosi fan Tutte at the spectacular Palais Garnier opera house, and a farewell dinner at a classic Parisian restaurant. Optional activities include a cooking class, wine-and-cheese tasting, walking tour of St. Germain, and a half-day excursion to Versailles. There’s also free time for exploring on your own.
Of course, we’re not traveling to Paris just to see the sights; we’ll also spend plenty of classroom time focusing on intensive writing curriculum. Which brings me to that workshop I didn’t mention last week…
Professional Writing faculty Lynnell Edwards; food for thought (and writing)
Announcing the Professional Writing Workshop
For the first time, our residency abroad includes a Professional Writing track. Professional Writing students will eat, drink, and write in the City of Lights with a workshop led by Lynnell Edwards, associate programs director of the School of Creative and Professional Writing. The curriculum introduces the modes of professional writing using the city as your classroom. You’ll use your experiences to write reviews, travel narratives, culinary appreciations, media communications, and a variety of other content for target audiences.
This workshop is available to incoming students or alumni interested in pursuing the Graduate Certificate in Writing on the professional track. Current students may participate as well, counting this as a cross-genre workshop, if space allows. After residency, students return home to spend an independent study working on a curriculum tailored to their particular professional goals. For more information about professional writing, contact Lynnell Edwards.
On the Creative Writing front
Our creative writing faculty for Paris are K.L. Cook, prose; Maggie Smith, poetry; Lamar Giles, writing for children and young adults; and Charlie Schulman, dramatic writing. As Chair of the School of Writing, Kathleen Driskell presides over both the creative and professional writing tracks.
Kathleen Driskell, Chair of the School of Creative and Professional Writing
Faculty-led workshops form the backbone of residency. As a creative writing student, you’ll also attend craft lectures, readings, and sessions on publishing or professional writing. You’ll read and discuss French literature in translation and try your hand at a cross-genre exercise that builds off your experiences in Paris. After residency, you’ll return home to work one-on-one with a faculty mentor in an independent study focused on fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, writing for children and young adults, playwriting, or screenwriting.
How much does tuition cost?
Tuition is the same as in spring and fall semesters: $585/credit hour, or $8,775 for the semester, comprising the 3-hour residency course in Paris and the 12-hour independent study course.
What about the Paris ground travel package price?
Before January 10 for current students or March 10 for incoming students, the ground travel package price is $3,495. After those respective dates, the travel package costs $3,895. For alumni, the price is $3,745 before January 10, $3,895 after. A shared room at the Hotel André Latin is included; flights, however, are not.
What’s the deadline to apply?
February 1 is the early-placement application deadline for admission to all of our low-residency programs—the MFA program, Master of Arts in Writing (MAW) program, and certificate program—for the Summer 2020 semester. Late applications will be considered, but students who apply late may be wait-listed.
How do I sign up?
If you’re a current student or alum, you should have received my email with travel enrollment instructions. If you didn’t receive the email—or if you’re interested in learning about becoming a graduate student in one of our low-residency writing programs—drop me an email. I’m always happy to talk with you!
Katy Yocom’s novel Three Ways to Disappear won the Siskiyou Prize for New Environmental Literature and was named a Barnes & Noble Top Indie Favorite. She is a 2019 recipient of the Al Smith Fellowship for artistic excellence from the Kentucky Arts Council. Her fiction, poetry, essays, and journalism have appeared in Newsweek, LitHub, Salon, American Way in-flight magazine, Terrain.org, The Louisville Review, Necessary Fiction, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in Writing from Spalding University and is a recipient of grants from the Elizabeth George Foundation and the Kentucky Foundation for Women.