My desk at Catwalk.

If you follow me on Instagram, you may have noticed that I just spent the better part of two weeks at my very first writing residency. I was lucky enough to be granted a residency at the CATWALK Institute in Catskill, New York, where I was given the time and space to work on my book — and only my book — for twelve days.

The art residency program at CATWALK is really special. The artist studios and residences are located in and around the historic home of Hudson River School painter Charles Herbert Moore. The 1865 house is surrounded by 65 acres of trees, meadows, ponds, deer, chipmunks, turtles, hawks, coyotes, and sweeping dramatic views of the Hudson. Being in a new place was inspiring, productive, and invigorating; the Catskills are an excellent place for going for walks when you hit a wall while writing.

Me on a hike to the appropriately-named Inspiration Point.

Plus, the best part of CATWALK is they give you a studio and then they leave you alone. It is a highly self-directed residency, which means you can structure your days however you want: yoga in the morning, writing midday, a hike in the afternoon, reading during dinner. Or maybe you prefer to sleep in, go for a walk during lunch, and then stay up all night writing. It’s up to you, and it’s goddamn lovely.

Oh, and did I mention that my writing studio was located in the TOP OF A TOWER? Yeah, no big deal, just my literal childhood dream coming true.

Yes, my writing studio was in there.

However, none of this would have been possible without certain individuals, and I want to thank Purcell Palmer, founder and owner of CATWALK, along with residency manager May Beattie and property manager Chuck Irwin, for inviting me to be part of this magical residency program, and for everything they did to make my stay in Catskill so comfortable and valuable.

Also, I want to encourage all Columbia School of the Arts, NYU Tisch School of the Arts, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Vassar alumni to apply! Take advantage of this incredible opportunity. You won’t regret it, I promise.

View from my writing studio. Did I mention it was in the top of a tower?

The post Catwalk Art Residency! appeared first on E.B. Bartels.

For the full interview, see it on Fiction Advocate.
Originally published on October 14, 2015.

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In the seventh of her series of interviews with women who write nonfiction, E.B. Bartels converses with historian Martha Hodes.

Martha Hodes is the author of three books: Mourning Lincoln (Yale University Press, 2015), The Sea Captain’s Wife: A True Story of Love, Race, and War in the Nineteenth Century (W.W. Norton, 2006), and White Women, Black Men: Illicit Sex in the Nineteenth-Century South (Yale University Press, 1997), and the editor of a collection of essays, Sex, Love, Race: Crossing Boundaries in North American History (New York University Press, 1999). The Sea Captain’s Wifewas one of three finalists for the Lincoln Book Prize, and White Women, Black Men was winner of the Allan Nevins Prize for Literary Distinction in the Writing of History. Hodes has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Charles Warren Center at Harvard University, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and the Whiting Foundation, and she served as a Fulbright Senior Scholar in Germany. Hodes is also an elected fellow of the Society of American Historians and has consulted on many documentaries, museum exhibitions, and radio and television shows, including the 2010 documentary The Loving Story about the 1967 U.S. Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia. She is Professor of History at New York University.

The post Non-Fiction by Non-Men: Martha Hodes appeared first on E.B. Bartels.