When I launched The Coyote Creek Writer’s Residency at the end of 2019, I hoped the residency would allow writers and artists of all stripes an opportunity to experience the regenerative–and generative!!–power of my family farm in Eugene, OR. I still hope that! And, due to the pandemic, I have also created a way to experience the land virtually: follow Coyote Creek Writer’s Residency on Instagram! Our second writer in residence, Sheila McMullin, shared some lovely reflections published at that site.

The Coyote Creek Writer’s Residency: Retreat from the noisy world to a beautiful rural setting, only minutes from the charming college town of Eugene, Oregon. Wander the fifty acres, looking for elk, bear, and coyote tracks, listening to the red wing blackbirds and red-tailed hawks.

Drink tea in comfort while the rain comes down. Build a fire, groom a horse, read and write, and attend to your creative needs. Open to writers of all genres; artists in other mediums are welcome to apply. Drop me a line for more information about accommodations, scheduling, and costs.

Writers in Residence

Fall 2019

Emily Vizzo is a writer, editor, and educator whose work has appeared in FIELD, Blackbird, jubilat, North American Review, The Los Angeles Times, Next American City and other publications. She previously covered Congress for the Scripps Howard News Service in Washington, D.C., and has written extensively on topics including the San Diego biotech industry, corporate social justice, surf, the arts, education, business, and health.

Emily served as Assistant Managing Editor with Drunken Boat journal, and volunteered with VIDA, Poetry International, Hunger Mountain and Writers Resist Los Angeles. Her essay, “A Personal History of Dirt,” was honored as a notable essay in Best American Essays 2013, and she was selected for inclusion within Best New Poets 2015. Poems have been nominated for Best of the Net each year from 2015-2018, and Emily has received two Pushcart nominations. With Curtis Bauer, she has published translations from Spanish on the respected From the Fishouse website.

YesYes Books published her chapbook GIANTESS in November 2018.  Emily serves on the Executive Committee for the Santa Barbara Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation, and is a recent Artist in Residence with the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis. She was a San Diego Area Writing Project fellow, and is currently a National Geographic Educator.

Spring 2021

Sheila McMullin is the author of daughterrarium (2017), winner of the Cleveland State University Poetry Center First Book Prize chosen by Daniel Borzutzky. She is a 2020 Arts for LA Arts Delegate and  offers writing workshops and editing services.

As a youth organizer and coach, she co-edited The Day Tajon Got Shot, the Black Lives Matter novel-in-stories written by middle school writers from the Beacon House community center in NE Washington DC, and Humans of Ballou, the non-fiction collection of high school students living in Anacostia who know a different side of Washington DC, both from Shout Mouse Press.

She has worked as a student success coach for ASU Local, and formerly directed Action Civics CA, an initiative of Mikva Challenge whose mission it is to empower youth to be informed, active citizens and community leaders, and build a stronger democracy that values youth voice and where leaders reflect the nation’s diversity.

From 2013-2017 she was an active member VIDA: Women in Literary Arts and served on the Board of Directors,. She holds her MFA in Poetry from George Mason University where she was the 2012-2013 Heritage Fellow and the poetry editor and blog/twitter manager for So to Speak: a journal of language of art. During her final year at GMU, she interned at the Library of Congress in the Poetry and Literature Center helping to create easily accessible poetry resources for the public through the Library of Congress database. In 2010, Sheila lived and traveled throughout China teaching English to university students in the Shandong Province.