The Soul Mountain Retreat is a writer's colony in East Haddam, Connecticut, USA.
The retreat was established in 2004 with a grant from the University of Connecticut College of Liberal Arts and Sciences [1] by the writer and former Connecticut poet laureate Marilyn Nelson. The idea for creating the retreat grew out of the Cave Canem workshops. [2]
Soul Mountain offers fellowships to "emerging and established poets" [3] with an emphasis on supporting writers belonging to traditionally underrepresented racial or cultural groups. [4]
The non-profit organization has established partnerships with African Continuum Theater Company, Cave Canem, Kundiman, the University of Connecticut, Sarah Lawrence College, New York University, and the University of Wisconsin at Madison. [4]
Past fellows have included Samiya Bashir, Sherwin Bitsui, Kwame Dawes, LeAnne Howe, Tara Betts, Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhran, [5] Allison Hedge Coke, Harryette Mullen, Bushra Rehman, and Afaa M. Weaver. [6]
Albert James Young was an American poet, novelist, essayist, screenwriter, and professor. He was named Poet Laureate of California by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger from 2005 to 2008. Young's many books included novels, collections of poetry, essays, and memoirs. His work appeared in literary journals and magazines including Paris Review, Ploughshares, Essence, The New York Times, Chicago Review, Seattle Review, Brilliant Corners: A Journal of Jazz & Literature, Chelsea, Rolling Stone, Gathering of the Tribes, and in anthologies including the Norton Anthology of African American Literature, and the Oxford Anthology of African American Literature.
Thomas Sayers Ellis is an American poet, photographer and bandleader. He previously taught as an associate professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Bennington College in Vermont, and also at Sarah Lawrence College until 2012.
Graywolf Press is an independent, non-profit publisher located in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Graywolf Press publishes fiction, non-fiction, and poetry.
Samiya A. Bashir is a queer American artist, poet, and author. Much of Bashir's poetry explores the intersections of culture, change, and identity through the lens of race, gender, the body and sexuality. She is currently the June Jordan visiting professor at Columbia University of New York. Bashir is the first black woman recipient of the Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize in Literature. She was also the third black woman to serve as tenured professor at Reed College in Portland, Oregon.
Afaa Michael Weaver, formerly known as Michael S. Weaver, is an American poet, short-story writer, and editor. He is the author of numerous poetry collections, and his honors include a Fulbright Scholarship and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Pew Foundation, and Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. He is the Director of the Writing Intensive at The Frost Place.
Cave Canem Foundation is an American 501(c)(3) organization founded in 1996 by poets Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady to remedy the underrepresentation and isolation of African-American poets in Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree programs and writing workshops across the United States. It is based in Brooklyn, New York.
Tara Betts is the author of three full-length poetry collections: Refuse to Disappear, which was published in June 2022 with The Word Works, Break the Habit, which was published in October 2016 with Trio House Press, and her debut collection Arc & Hue on the Willow Books imprint of Aquarius Press. In 2010, Essence Magazine named her as one of their "40 Favorite Poets".
The James Merrill House is a 19th-century late-Victorian style house at 107 Water Street in Stonington Borough in southeastern Connecticut, formerly owned by poet James Merrill. Upon his death in 1995, the house was kept by the village as a home for writers and scholars.
The Dark Room Collective was an influential African-American poetry collective. Established in 1988, the collective hosted a reading series that featured leading figures in Black literature.
Geffrey Davis is an American poet and professor. He is the author of Revising the Storm (2014) and Night Angler (2019). He teaches in The Arkansas Programs in Creative Writing and Translation at the University of Arkansas and lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas. He also serves on the poetry faculty at the Rainier Writing Workshop, a low-residency MFA program at Pacific Lutheran University.
Bianca Lynne Spriggs is an American poet and multidisciplinary artist born in Milwaukee, WI. While widely considered a born-and-bred Kentuckian, she actually moved around a lot due to the nature of her parents' work. For several years of her childhood, she would bounce around from Florida, Indiana, and Milwaukee. She moved to Kentucky when she was eleven years old and lived there the longest. She currently resides in Athens, OH where she is an Assistant Professor of English at Ohio University. As a second generation Affrilachian Poet, she is the author of Kaffir Lily, How Swallowtails Become Dragons, The Galaxy is a Dance Floor, and Call Her By Her Name. She is the editor of The Swallowtale Project: Creative Writing for Incarcerated Women (2012), and co-editor of the anthologies, Circe's Lament: An Anthology of Wild Women, Undead: A Poetry Anthology of Ghouls, Ghosts, and More, and Black Bone: 25 Years of the Affrilachian Poets(University of Kentucky Press, 2018).
Yolanda Wisher is an American poet, educator and spoken word artist who focuses on the experience of being African-American. She is a graduate of Temple University and was selected as the third Poet Laureate of Philadelphia in 2016.
Samantha Felisha Thornhill is a poet, author, educator and producer from the island nation of Trinidad and Tobago.
Morgan Parker is an American poet, novelist, and editor. She is the author of poetry collections Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night, There are More Beautiful Things than Beyoncé, and Magical Negro, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award. She is also author of the young adult novel, Who Put This Song On. She has been described as a "multidisciplinary phenom" for her diverse body of work.
Reginald M. Harris, Jr. is a poet and writer and winner of the 2012 Cave Canem/Northwestern University Poetry Prize.
John Warner Smith is an American poet and educator. He formerly held the position as the Louisiana Poet Laureate. His poems have appeared in numerous published works.
Gary Jackson is an American educator and poet. He had received a Cave Canem and Bread Loaf fellowship and was awarded the Cave Canem Poetry Prize in 2009.
Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics a collection of poetry by transgender and genderqueer writers, edited by TC Tolbert and Trace Peterson. The collection itself contains some of the works by 55 different poets along with a "poetics statement", a reflection by each poet that provides context for their work. The book was published in 2013 by Nightboat Books. The collection was reviewed by Stephanie Burt on Poetry Foundation's website. It has been called "the first-ever collection of poetry by trans and genderqueer poets." An earlier anthology, “Of Souls and Roles, Of Sex and Gender," was compiled by trans activist Rupert Raj between 1982 and 1991, but remains available only in manuscript form at The ArQuives: Canada's LGBQT2+ Archives and at the Transgender Archives, University of Victoria.
Aurielle Marie is an American poet and activist. Their debut collection Gumbo Ya Ya received the 2020 Cave Canem Poetry Prize and the Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Poetry.
Xan Forest Phillips is an American poet and visual artist from rural Ohio.