Ledig House International Writers Residency

Overview

Application Guidelines

Ledig House Residents

Guest Speakers

Board of Directors, Advisory Board, Sponsors

Endowments



Overview

Ledig House International Writers Residency is located approximately two and a half hours north of New York City in the town of Omi, in the scenic Hudson River Valley. Writers and translators from all fields are encouraged to apply for a residence lasting anywhere from one week to two months. Up to 20 writers per session--10 at a given time--live and write on the stunning 300 acre grounds and sculpture park that overlooks the Catskill Mountains.

Ledig House provides all meals, and each night a cook prepares dinner. Days are reserved as quiet hours, while evenings afford a more communal environment. During each session, several guests from the New York publishing community are invited for dinner and discussion. Bicycles, a swimming pool and nearby tennis court are available for use.

Unless otherwise arranged, writers must provide their own transportation to and from Ledig House. A colony car will be sent to pick writers up at the train station in nearby Hudson, New York. All writers should be proficient in English.

Created in 1992, Ledig House International Writers Residency is named after the German publisher Heinrich Maria Ledig-Rowohlt. Ledig had a reputation as a man with an unerring sense of literary quality. His publishing list included prominent writers from around the world--Thomas Wolfe, William Faulkner, Yukio Mishima, Jean Paul Sartre, Vladimir Nabokov, John Updike, Toni Morrison, Albert Camus, and Thomas Pynchon, to name only a few.

In its short history, Ledig House has hosted hundreds of writers and translators from roughly 50 countries around the world. The colony's strong international emphasis reflects the spirit of cultural exchange that is part of Ledig's enduring legacy.



Application Guidelines 2010

Spring: Mid-March to Early June
Fall: Mid-September to Late November


The annual deadline for applications must be postmarked by November 20. Late applications will be held and considered the succeeding year. Please include the following materials:

1. How did you hear about Ledig House?
   
   
2. A biographical sketch including publications, performances and writing credits.
   
   
3. One non-returnable copy of your latest published work. If unpublished, send a ten page sample of your latest work.
   
   
4. A one page description of the work to be undertaken while at Ledig House.
   
   
5. One letter of recommendation. (This must be included with your application materials and provided in a sealed envelope with the signature of the individual who wrote the letter placed across the seal.)
   
   
6. One self-addressed stamped envelope (SASE) for notification. (Non-US applicants are asked to include a sufficient "international postage coupon" in lieu of stamps.)
   
   
7. A telephone number or e-mail address where you can be reached.
   
   

Applicants should specify a preference for the spring or fall session as well as the amount of time desired - no shorter than two weeks and no longer than two months.

All applicants who include an SASE will be notified of selections by February 1st.

Due to the high volume of applications we are not able to respond to email inquiries regarding receipt of material or acceptance to the program.

Send completed applications to:

Ledig House Applications
Omi, Inc.
55 Fifth Avenue, 15th Floor
New York, NY 10003


For further information:

Fax: (212) 206-6114
Email Writers



Fellowships & Prizes

Francis Greenburger Fellowship on Mitigating Religious and Ethnic Conflict: Fellowship only for an artist whose work relates to managing and/or mitigating religious and ethnic conflict. Work made at Omi must be in direct relation to this area.


Listen to Australian writer Lee Tulloch's radio interview, conducted live from Ledig House on May 5, 2009.
It was originally broadcast on the ABC Book Show. Lee Tulloch interview from Ledig House.




THE OMI INTERNATIONAL WELCOMES EIGHTEEN WRITERS FROM AROUND THE WORLD FOR THE 2009 SPRING SESSION AT LEDIG HOUSE

The Omi International Arts Center is proud to welcome its spring residents to the Ledig House Writers Residency Program. The session will run from March 13th – June 5th. We have scheduled two community readings. The first will take place on April 11th in the Marianne Courville Gallery above Hudson Wine Merchants at 341 ½ Warren Street from 5-7pm. The residents will read from their work before enjoying a selection of cheeses and wines with all those in attendance. The second community reading will take place on May 16th at the Omi International Arts Center (59 Letter S Road in Ghent). The residents will read from their work at 5PM and there will be a BBQ to follow. All events are free and open to the public.

In the seventeen years since its founding, the Ledig House International Writers' Colony has invited nearly five hundred writers and translators from over fifty countries to Columbia County and opened up a vital cultural byway between the Hudson Valley and the rest of the globe. In the last year alone Ledig House has hosted writers from twenty countries including Australia, Germany, India, Denmark, the U.K., Italy, Romania, Hungary, Guatemala, Iran, Bosnia, and Sweden. Here are some details regarding the incoming group of residents, which include an Icelandic playwright, a Chinese novelsit, and a Korean translator – just to name a few:

Chad Anderson (US, Fiction) Chad hails from Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. In 2006, he earned his B.A. in English and American Studies from the University of Virginia. Chad is currently finishing his MFA degree in fiction at Indiana University, where he received a Neal-Marshall Graduate Fellowship in Creative Writing. His fiction was nominated for the AWP Intro Awards in fall 2007. Chad currently serves as Fiction Editor for the Indiana Review.

Chloe Aridjis (Mexico, Fiction) photo by Hartwig Klappert
Chloe grew up in the Netherlands and Mexico. She studied literature at Harvard and then wrote her PhD on nineteenth-century French poetry and magic shows at Oxford. After England she lived in Berlin for five years and completed her first novel, Book of Clouds, which will be published this year in the US, UK, Italy, France, the Netherlands and Spain. She is currently working on a collection of short stories and a second novel.

Alfred Corn (US, Poetry/Nonfiction)
Alfred has published nine volumes of poetry, one novel, two collections of literary essays, and an introduction to the work of the photographer Aaron Rose. He has translated Aristophanes’s Frogs, and poetry from the French, Italian, German, and Spanish. He has received prizes and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Academy of Arts and Letters, the Academy of American Poets, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Poetry magazine. He is a United States citizen but spends a good part of the year in the U.K.

Jan Gielkens (Netherlands, Translation)
Born in Kerkrade, Jan studied German Language and Literature in Utrecht and completed a PhD in history in Bremen (Germany) in 1999. From 1978 to 2000 he was a research assistant and a researcher at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam. Since 2000, Jan has been a part-time senior researcher at the Huygens Institute in The Hague. He has been translating German literature since 1974, including novels, poetry, and essays. Jan has presented his own research at conferences throughout Europe and in the United States.

Alex Halberstadt (US, Fiction) Alex is the author of Lonely Avenue: the Unlikely Life and Times of Doc Pomus and is at work on a family memoir entitled Young Heroes of the Soviet Union, forthcoming from Random House in 2010. His work has appeared in the New York Times, GQ, New York Magazine and the Paris Review. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Christian Haller (Switzerland, Fiction, Playwriting) Born in Brugg, Aargau, Christian received a Masters in Zoology from the University of Basel. For eight years he worked as the director of Social Studies at the Gottlieb Duttweiler-Institute in Rüschlikon/Zürich. He spent years as a dramaturgist at different theatres. From 1987 to 1995 he was president of the Association of theatre actors of Switzerland and was also member of the theatre commission of the city of Zürich. From 2000 to 2004 he was member of jury for the Swiss Award of Schiller Foundation for Literature. Christian has published novels, short stories, plays and poems and received a prestigious award for his “trilogy of remembrance.”

Susanne Kippenberger (Germany, Fiction/Nonfiction) Susanne was born in Dortmund, grew up in Essen, studied German and English literature and American Studies in Tübingen, Germany, and Springfield, Ohio. She went on a Fulbright fellowship to New York to study film at NYU and work in MoMA’s press department. Susanne has worked as a freelance journalist in Hamburg for the weekly Die Zeit, radio stations and magazines. In 1989 she moved to Berlin to work at Der Tagesspiegel where she is one of the editors of the weekend supplement. She has won several journalistic prizes for pieces on architecture and food and wrote the biography of her brother Martin, Kippenberger. Der Künstler und seine Familien. While at Ledig House she will be working on Culinary Bohème.

Ju Youn Lee (Korea, Translation) Ju Youn was born in Seoul and majored in French and English. She has translated French and English books into Korean including works such as No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July, Love Creeps by Amanda Filipacchi and At the End of Our Tethers by Alasdair Gray. She was involved in the Pusan International Film Festival as a translator for the film directors. Ju Youn’s own fiction includes a collection of short stories. She has also worked as a literary agent since 2004.

Marie Myung-Ok Lee (US, Fiction/Nonfiction) Marie’s novel, Somebody’s Daughter, was a Booklist Best Book of the Year and an Association of American University Presses “Best of the Best.” Her fiction has appeared in The Kenyon Review, American Voice, Witness, TriQuarterly, Guernica, and has been short-listed for the O. Henry awards. Her nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek, the Washington Post, New Worlds of Literature (Norton anthology) and Love You To Pieces: Creative Writers on Raising a Child with Special Needs. Marie is writer-in-residence at Brown University, where she teaches creative writing, and has been a judge for the National Book Awards, a Fulbright Scholar and a MacDowell Colony fellow.

David Ventura Bernardo Machado (Portugal, Fiction) David was born in Lisbon, Portugal and has lived there for most of his life. He spent one year studying in Italy and another year living in Holland. David has a degree in Economics, working in that field for a number of years. Since 2003 he has been writing full time. In the last four years he has published one novel, one book of short-stories and three books for children.

Kristín Ómarsdóttir (Iceland, Fiction/Playwriting/Poetry)
Kristín was born in Reykjavík where she still lives and works. She writes poetry, plays and novels; her most recent work is a book of poetry, which was published in the fall 2008. Kristín has also collaborated with visual artists.

 

Iskender Pala (Turkey, Nonfiction) Iskender, known as “The man who encourages love of Ottoman poetry,” has been recognized with numerous awards: the Turkish Writer Union Language prize (1989),Turkish Language Institute prize (1990), The Turkish Writer’s Union prize (1996), the Intellectuals Guild Prize, and he was named Turkey’s Thinking Man of the Year (2001). Iskender received his PHD in Ottoman Literature in 1983; he became an Associate Professor in 1993 and a full Professor in 1998. He is still working as a lecturer at Istanbul Kültür University.

Dy Plambeck (Denmark, Fiction) Dy was educated at the Danish Writer's School in 2004. Her first publication was a poetry collection, Tales from Bure Lake, in 2005, for which she won the Danish Academy’s Prize for first novel and received the coveted Danish Art Council’s three year scholarship. Her second book, the novel Texas' rose has been nominated for two literary prizes and translated into Swedish. In 2008 Dy published the children’s book The Hill of Dreams. She has written songs, plays for radio and an operetta.

Mohan Sikka (India, Fiction) Mohan’s story “Uncle Musto Takes a Mistress” has been selected for a 2009 O. Henry Prize. His fiction has also been published in One Story, the Toronto South Asian Review, Trikone Magazine, and in anthologies. His story, “Railway Aunty,” is forthcoming in Delhi Noir, part of the award-winning urban noir series from Akashic Books. In 2006, Mohan graduated with an MFA from the Brooklyn College fiction program, where he received the Hiram Brown Award and the CUNYarts First Prize for Graduate Short Fiction. Mohan is completing a story collection and starting work on a novel. He currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Kaspar Schnetzler (Switzerland, Fiction) Photo by Guido Baselgia
Kaspar was born in Zurich, studying German Language and Literature and Art History at the University of Zurich and Freie Universität in Berlin. From 1968 to 2003 he was a professor at a State Gymnasium in Zurich. In 1972 and 1973 he was a Resident Lecturer at New England College in Henniker, New Hampshire. His first novel was titled Der Fall Bruder (News from New Hampshire). Kaspar has been writing full time since 2003.

Rob Schouten (Netherlands, Fiction/Poetry/Nonfiction) Rob is a writer, columnist and literary critic. He has published ten volumes of poetry, several essays, a volume of short stories and a novel. His body of work includes a book about the US: Adres gewijzigd (Letters from America). Rob had been a writer-in-residence at the University of Minnesota and a Professor of Literary Critcism at the Free University of Amsterdam. In 2001 he was awarded the Herman Gorter Prize for his poetry.

Sarah Schulman (US, Fiction) Sarah is the author of nine novels, four nonfiction books and a number of produced plays. She is co-director of The ACT UP Oral History Project (www.actuporalhistory.org), Professor of English at the City University of New York, and a Fellow at the NYU Institute of The Humanities.

Abiye Teklemariam Megenta (Ethiopia, Nonfiction)
Abiye is a lawyer by profession who turned to journalism in 2005. He has served as the editor-in-chief of Addis Neger, the leading weekly Amharic-language independent newspaper in Ethiopia. Addis Neger is only one of a handful of independently-owned media outlets the government has allowed to operate in the country since fall 2007. Over the last year, Abiye and his colleagues have been the target of legal harassment, threats, and arrests over their coverage. He is now working on a full-length book, detailing corruption and suppression of freedom of expression in Ethiopia.

Trinh Lu (Vietnam, Translation)
Trinh is a literary translator in Vietnam. His Vietnamese translation of Yan Martel's Life of Pi won the Translation Award 2005 of both the Vietnam Writers' Association and Ha Noi Writers' Association. His recent published translations include Francis Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, John Banville's The Sea, Paul Auster's The New York Trilogy, Music of Chance, Man in the Dark, and Natural Color - an English translation of selected poems by a Vietnamese author.

Lee Tulloch (Australia, Fiction/Nonfiction) Lee was born in Melbourne. A graduate in English Literature from Melbourne University, she has had a career as novelist and journalist, writing extensively on fashion and culture for international publications such as Vogue, Elle, Harper's Bazaar and New York magazine. She was the founding editor of Harper's Bazaar Australia. In 1985 she moved to New York, where she wrote her first novel, Fabulous Nobodies. Her other novels are Wraith, Two Shanes, The Cutting and The Woman in the Lobby and she has published a book of her fashion essays, Perfect Pink Polish. She currently lives in Sydney and is at work on a new novel Dorothea Goes Wild.

Anya Ulinich (US, Fiction) Anya was born in Moscow and immigrated to the U.S. as a teenager. She attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and received an MFA in visual arts from the University of California at Davis. In 2000, she moved to Brooklyn, abandoned painting and began to write. Petropolis is her first novel.Joanne Wang (US, Translation)
A literary agent and a translator, Joanne was born in Beijing and studied at Fudan University in Shanghai with a major in English literature. She began her career in publishing in New York and in 2000 started her own literary agency with a focus on Chinese works.

Amy Waldman (US, Fiction)
Amy grew up in Los Angeles and lives in Brooklyn. She worked as a journalist for 15 years before turning to fiction. She was a reporter for The New York Times, including three years based in New Delhi, and a national correspondent at The Atlantic. In 2006-7 she was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She is at work on her first novel, The Submission, which is under contract to Farrar Straus & Giroux.

Xu Xiaobin (China, Fiction/Playwriting) Xu Xiaobin was born in Beijing. She started writing novels in 1981 and has published more than 30 books since then. She received China’s National Fiction Award, and published The Selected Works of Xu Xiaobin in five volumes. Her novel, Feather Serpent, will be published by Simon & Schuster later this year. In addition to the English edition, this book will also be published in French, Japanese, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, and Brazilian.


For information please call 518-392-4568 ex. 100



Ledig House Guest Speaker Program

The Guest Speaker Program brings Ledig House residents together with literary agents, editors, and publishers in an informal setting. The guest series provides the opportunity for frank discussion on subjects such as the future of world literature in the marketplace. Moreover it fosters connections between authors and the industry which supports, and is supported, by them.

Past Guest Speakers

Alex Abromovich, Managing Editor, Feed Magazine
Lisa Bankoff, Agent, I.C.M.
Sara Bershtel, Editor, Metropolitan Books
Jennifer Carlson, Agent, Henry Dunow
Judy Clain, Editor, Little, Brown & Co.
Chandler Crawford, Agent, Chandler Crawford Literary Agency, Inc.
Jessica Dineen, Editor, The New England Review
Barbara Epler, Editor-in-Chief, New Directions Press
Ariane Fink, Scout, Sanford J. Greenburger & Assoc.
Gary Fisketjon, Senior Editor, Knopf
Warren Frazier, Agent, John Hawkins & Associates
Carol Frederick, Scout, Sanford J. Greenburger & Assoc.
Sally Woffrod Girand, Brick House Literary Agents
Karin Graf, Agent and founder, Graf & Graf
Nikolaus Hansen, Editor-in-Chief, Mare Buch
Marcel Hartages, Editor, Rowohlt Verlag
Stefania Heim, Circumference magazine
John Hodgman, Agent, Writers House
Amy Holman, Director, Poets & Writers
Violaine Huisman, (Seven Stories)
Tim Jung, Marebuch Verlag
Beena Kamlani, Senior Editor, Viking/Penguin
Jennifer Kronovet, Circumference magazine
Sean McDonald, Editor, Riverhead
Albert Mobilio, (Bookforum)
Ethan Nosowsky, Editor, Farrar, Straus, & Giroux
Barbara Perlmutter, Scout, Fischer Velag
Nina Ryan, Agent, Coles-Ryan Literary Agency
Samantha Schnee, Words Without Borders
Jill Schoolman, (Archipelago)
Heather Schroeder, Agent, International Creative Management
Susan Schulman, Founder and Agent, Susan Schulman A Literary Agency
Bettina Schwebe, Scout for numerous foreign publishers
Ira Silverberg, Agent, Donadio & Olson, Inc.
Daniel Slager, (Harcourt)
Paul Slovak, Editor, Viking/Penguin
Lorin Stein, (FSG)
Nan Talese, Pubisher, Nan A. Talese/Doubleday
Peter Terzian, (Newsday)
Deborah Treisman, Fiction Editor, The New Yorker
Ann Triestman, Editor, William Morrow
Jessica Wayneright, Agent, The Wayneright Agency
Lauren Wein, Editor, Grove Atlantic
Svante Weyler, Editor-in-Chief, Norstedts Forlag
Drenka Willen, (Harcourt)
Amy Williams, Collins & McCormick


Sponsors

Ledig House's sponsorship program provides foundations, corporations, and individuals the opportunity to aid the world's most talented writers and translators with the gift of a fellowship. Depending on the donor's wishes, fellowships can be tailored to different disciplines--fiction, non-fiction, or translation--as well as to different regions of the world. Memorial and honorary fellowships are also available.

The Endowment Program

Ongoing endowments can also be created to insure annual support for Ledig House writers. Large, one-time donations are made to Ledig House and invested in a money market account, the interest of which defrays the cost of a fellowship each year. Endowments can be set up anonymously or carry the name of the benefactor.

For more information on how to sponsor a writer at Ledig House, please contact:

Ledig House, Omi International Arts Center
55 Fifth Avenue, 15th Floor
New York, N.Y. 10003
212-206-6060

Ledig House is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit arts organization.
All donations are tax-deductible.


Board of Directors
Advisors
Sponsors

Executive Director

D. W. Gibson

Board of Directors

Esther Allen
Sara Bershtel
Dorthe Binkert
Dominique Bourgois
Bill Clegg
Nayana Currimbhoy
Kate Darling
Nicholas Ellison
Barbara Epler
Inge Feltrinelli
Alexander Fest
Ariane Fink
Gary Fisketjon
Carol Frederick
Helmut Frielinghaus
Karin Graf
Francis Greenburger
Nikolaus Hansen, Co-Chairperson, Europe
Hans Georg Heepe
Beena Kamlani
David Knowles
Sigrid Kraus
Agnes Krup
Antje Landshoff
Jeffrey Lependorf
Carol Mann
Michael Naumann
Viktor Niemann
Marleen Reimer
Daniel Slager
Barbara Tolley, Co-Chairperson, US
Betsy von Furstenberg Reynolds
Svante Weyler
Sally Wofford-Girand

Advisory Committee

Edward J. Acton
T.D. Allman
Anna Bourgeois
Oliver Bourgeois
George Cockcroft
Fred Jordan
Chris Loken
Jack Macrae
Emily Mann
Nenad Popovich
Ulla Rowohlt
Sir George Weidenfeld

Sponsors

Australian Cultural Council
Danish Literature and Information Center
Dutch Foundation for Literature
Finish Literature Exchange
Indiana University
Institute for Portuguese Books and Libraries
National Foundation for Jewish Culture
Piper Verlag
ProHelvetia
H.M. Ledig Rowohlt Foundation
Rowohlt Verlag
Royal Literary Fund
Turkish Copyright Office




Ledig House is made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.

Endowments

The Robert Buchbinder Fellowship
The Diane Cleaver Fellowship
Ledig Rowohlt Fellowship
The Jack Weprin Fellowship

Sponsors - Thank You

Ledig House expresses its gratitude to all of the sponsors for their support.







Ledig House is a proud member of the
freeDimensional Network
www.freedimensional.org


Ledig House is proud to partner with the Dutch Foundation for Literature in a residency exchange program. For more information about the Dutch Foundation for Literature, please visit: http://www.fondsvoordeletteren.nl

Ledig House is proud to form a exchange partnership with Het beschrijf in Belgium. In this exchange, Het Beschrijf will work to bring a Belgian writer to Ledig House and Ledig House will work to bring an American writer to Het Beschrijf's residency program, Passa Porta.

The literary organisation Het beschrijf in Brussels has been a builder of bridges since its inception in 1998 - between different languages and literatures, literature and society, and literature and the other arts.

In 2004 Het beschrijf launched two new initiatives: the Passa Porta International House of Literature in the heart of Brussels, and a prestigious residency program for writers. Guest writers are able to choose to stay in the centre of the city or in the rural countryside of Brussels. The length of the stay varies between 4 and 8 weeks. Since 2004 Het beschrijf has welcomed some 80 writers from all over the world.

More information on the residence program on www.residencesinflanders.be