Michael Chabon announces anonymous gift in honor of agent Charlotte Sheedy expands MacDowell Colony’s commitment to trail-blazing writers.
A newly endowed fellowship for writers working from a place of cultural difference will honor literary agent Charlotte Sheedy’s pioneering influence on literary diversity. MacDowell Chairman Michael Chabon announced the fellowship at The Colony’s National Benefit in New York City at The Times Center in May. Funded by an anonymous $200,000 gift, the Charlotte Sheedy Fellowship will provide an annual residency of up to two months at The MacDowell Colony, the nation’s first artist residency program. The fellowship will support the work of writers representing populations across racial and cultural boundaries.
“The MacDowell Colony commits itself, every day, to supporting, fostering, and nurturing diverse artists in their daily struggle to make art. That commitment is written into the Mission Statement. It's been coded into MacDowell's DNA from the day in 1954 that James Baldwin walked into Baetz Studio and got down to work,” Chabon said.
Sheedy’s consideration of talent aligns perfectly with MacDowell’s focus on defining excellence in a pluralistic and inclusive way, encouraging applications from artists representing the widest possible range of perspectives.
While a student at Columbia University scouting for Dial Press, Sheedy attended the Columbia Women’s Liberation Conference and discovered the first book she’d usher into publication. Her success in advocating for Patience and Sarahby Isabel Miller, one of the earliest, explicitly lesbian literary novels to be published by a mainstream publishing house, led to her first client, black poet, activist, and MacDowell Fellow Audre Lorde, and her first bestseller, Marilyn French’s revolutionary feminist novel The Women’s Room. Thus began a 40-year career championing groundbreaking writers.
The Sheedy Fellowship reinforces MacDowell’s commitment to inclusivity in support of those who would become great contributors to the literary canon such as James Baldwin, Pauli Murray, Eileen Chang, Makoto Oda, Alice Walker, Audre Lorde, Louise Erdrich, Oscar Hijuelos, Etheridge Knight, Manil Suri, Colson Whitehead, 2014 National Book Award winner Jacqueline Woodson, and this year’s winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry Gregory Pardlo.
“Isolation, indifference, and lack of opportunity are the common lot of artists everywhere, but for an artist marginalized by cultural difference, as Charlotte Sheedy has always known, those effects are trebled by an inheritance of cruelty and injustice,” said Chabon. “They are intensified by mechanisms of discrimination both covert and plain as day. For these artists the struggle to make art takes a deeper toll and can lead to deeper despair.
"The MacDowell Colony has always been, and will always fight to remain, an enemy of that despair, and of the indifference, isolation, and injustice that array themselves against so many working artists. This amazing gift, honoring a remarkable woman who has long been a staunch advocate for and nurturer of writers, will allow MacDowell to fight harder, and hopefully to lasting effect, on behalf of those whose struggle has been so long, hard, and wearying.
Writers are encouraged to apply for fellowships at www.macdowellcolony.org/apply.html or obtain more information by writing admissions@macdowellcolony.org.
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Composer Edward MacDowell and pianist Marian MacDowell, his wife, founded The MacDowell Colony in 1907 to nurture the arts by offering creative individuals of the highest talent an inspiring environment in which to produce enduring works of the imagination. Each year, MacDowell welcomes more than 275 architects, composers, filmmakers, interdisciplinary artists, theatre artists, visual artists, and writers from across the United States and around the globe. More than 7,000 artists have received Fellowships to work at MacDowell. These artists include Milton Avery, James Baldwin, Osvaldo Golijov, Galway Kinnell, Lisa Kron, Glenn Ligon, and Wendy Wasserstein. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon is the chairman of MacDowell’s Board of Directors.
