Artist Residencies
"The only thing going for me that is really alive for me is my work" - Maurice Sendak
I’m often thinking about writing and good places to write.
I finished my last book at Yaddo, where I lived in Truman Capote’s room for six weeks. While there, I went on long runs and would often find painter Drea Cofield in the forest at her easel. I love feeling connected to the writers and artists who have come before me, sharing the same physical space. At most residencies, there is a wall in the room where you stay where you sign your name, and you can read the names of everyone else who has stayed there.
I didn’t know much about artists’ residencies before I got an agent and sold my book. I applied only to fully funded residencies. There are many that you can attend if you are willing to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars. I enjoyed the application process because, for the most part, the residencies ask you to submit pages of your book manuscript.
Being surrounded by other writers, dancers, visual artists, and musicians who are working on long-term projects made me feel seen, understood and inspired.
These are the residencies I attended while working on my last book:
Here are some residencies that are on my radar
To doing the work, the things that make us feel really alive,
Alice
2026 Speaking Engagements
March 24: “Food Literacy for All” at the University of Michigan
April 6: Featured speaker at ArkaText Festival - Film, Theater, and Creative Writing in Conway, Arkansas
Summer 2026: Book tour for the Italian edition of Life and Death of the American Worker in Milan, Italy
You can order LIFE AND DEATH OF THE AMERICAN WORKER: The Immigrants Taking on America’s Largest Meatpacking Company HERE.
“The workers who feed us are some of America’s poorest and most exploited workers. Alice Driver tells their stories with enormous compassion and grace. This is a fearless, wonderful book.” - Eric Schlosser, bestselling author of Fast Food Nation
Love how this captures the isolaton that actually makes residencies work. The bit about seeing Drea painting in the forest dunno why but it really stuck with me, maybe because residencies create these weird overlapping rhythms where everyones grinding alone but somehow together. The "being seen" paradox is real, people get it when you've ben staring at the same paragraph for 3 hours.