CALLING RHODE ISLAND WRITERS! THE LINDEN PLACE WRITERS’ RESIDENCY IS OPEN FOR SUBMISSIONS
Free Daytime Residency for the creative writers for the month of April
BRISTOL, R.I. – The 2026 Linden Place Writers’ Residency (LPWR) is open to submissions. Applications are due by 11:59 PM on February 6, with residents announced by March 1.
The application and complete information is available on our website at https://www.lindenplace.org/writers-residency
Now in its fifth year, LPWR is a free, month-long, daytime-only residency for creative writers wishing to interpret the museum’s complicated history through a creative lens.
The Residency is open to all levels of creative writer including beginner, mid-career, hobbyist, or seasoned writers, who will create a new work while they are in residence.
They must be at least 18 years old and meet one of the following criteria: Have Rhode Island as a primary residence at least 9 months of the year or live along the Massachusetts border within 25 miles of Linden Place. College students (18+) who can be present for the public reading event on June 11th are welcome to apply.
Three esteemed judges will select 6-10 residents to join us for the residency month of April. Each writer receives: on-site workspace through the month of April at Linden Place in Bristol, RI; research support from museum professionals; a $100 travel stipend for writers outside of Bristol for whom transportation costs are a barrier to access; a one-on-one consult with sensitivity reader Renee Harleston of Writing Diversely; press and publicity; an audience to hear works in progress at the Public Reading and Community Discussion in June; and 50% off accommodations at the Bradford-Dimond-Norris House B&B for those who choose to make use of it during the month of April.
Esteemed judges this year are Seth Rockman, a Pulitzer Prize finalist and award winning author and professor at Brown University; Ginny B. Moore, an award-winning historical romance author and educator; and Padma Venkatraman, an award-winning novelist, poet, and speaker. The three will choose up to ten writers to create new works of fiction or narrative non-fiction that incorporates an aspect of Linden Place while in residence during the month of April.
Linden Place is a historic estate museum and arts center that tells one family’s 200-year journey through American History. The 1810 Federal-period mansion and accompanying ballroom, sculpture garden, and outbuildings were built by one of America’s wealthiest and most influential families.
Over the next two centuries, descendants of the family occupied this home. They were slave traders, merchants, tycoons and artists. Today, this historic estate is a museum at the center of the region’s cultural and artistic life. Its literary lineage includes salons and poetry readings attended by such writers as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and John Greenleaf Whittier.
Linden Place’s mission is to preserve the treasured historic property for future generations and to create a welcoming environment by developing programs that enhance the artistic, cultural, and educational life of the community.
The residency is made possible in part by a grant from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, through an appropriation by the Rhode Island General Assembly and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and private funders.