A few weeks ago I received an email from a friend who had just been accepted into Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.
She, I, and another woman have been in an online writing group for the past 2 1/2 years. We’ve seen each other’s writing at its best and worst, and we’ve seen each other’s confidence at its best and worst, too. We push each other to do better. We want each other to succeed. We are always genuinely happy when news of publication for another member comes out.
But after reading this email about my friend’s acceptance into Bread Loaf, I stormed through the house. I went outside. I watered the garden. I looked at my cats. I cried.
Why? Hadn’t my friend been working on her writing for years? Didn’t she have a right to attend the conference?
I spent the morning fuming, picking apart my anger. And I realized it wasn’t my friend’s acceptance into the conference that upset me; it was the fact that Bread Loaf was closed off to me (and to so many other writers) not on the basis of writing ability but on the basis of income.
Attending Bread Loaf costs $3,050 for general applicants and $2,929 for auditors. Only those who have plenty of disposable income can even fathom paying such a price. For the rest of us, why even bother window-shopping when the price tag is so high? We just keep walking.
In fact, a friend of mine was accepted into a similarly prestigious conference only to decline her acceptance because, as she told me, “I just couldn’t afford it.” This is a writer who has published in prestigious literary journals, who has won contests and awards. A friend who, in my opinion, is just as deserving as the one who got into Bread Loaf.
On the Bread Loaf website, the director of the conference claims to “foster stimulating communities of diverse voices….” Yet I wonder if Bread Loaf, or any other fee-charging literary institution that waves the “we value diversity” flag, can genuinely make this claim. By charging writers such high fees, these literary institutions seal themselves off from what they claim to seek: diversity of talent, diversity of experience, diversity of voice.
These high-fee literary institutions are supposedly intended for the “best” writers, but in fact they cater to the best writers who have enough disposable income to pay for the conference, take the time off work, and make the pilgrimage to the conference and back. I’m not claiming that Bread Loaf lacks for talent, or that its writers don’t have interesting things to say. But it certainly lacks for diversity in at least one significant way, because most attendees share a privileged experience of the world.
There’s always been a link between privilege and mobility within the arts. If you are an artist, you are lucky if you can afford the time to work on your craft, and even luckier if you can afford the supplies required of your craft, and even luckier still if you are able to afford to respond to calls for conferences, residencies, and colonies. For those who get accepted, these institutions provide networking opportunities that enhance the artists’ careers, nudging them further up the ladder to success.
Some of these literary institutions do offer applicants scholarships and price reductions. But applicants who receive financial assistance are the exception, not the rule. Bread Loaf, on its website, states that 5% of people who applied for financial aid received an award. Applicants for financial assistance must submit an additional 300-word response to the question of why they want to attend the conference and what they hope to gain from it. Those who eventually gain funding must, I imagine, carry with them the feeling of being an exception to the norm, even though they have in fact proved themselves worthy two times over.
Can’t we do better?
Yes, as a matter of fact. We can. A number of conferences and residencies do fund their writers, some including the cost of travel and stipends. A few of these are Millay Colony for the Arts, MacDowell Colony, and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Affordability, such as these institutions offer, should be the bar that all fee-charging residencies and conferences set for themselves. 5% is not enough. Price cannot equate to prestige.
Sometimes I think those who cannot afford to attend conferences like Bread Loaf begin to convince themselves that they do not deserve to attend conferences like Bread Loaf. These conferences would have us believe this by their claims of diversity and prestige, by their assertion that they are truly bringing in the best. But you cannot have prestige without diversity, and you cannot have diversity within a class-structured system.
My frustration over Bread Loaf led to me to re-assert that I am no less deserving of this experience due to my income, and that other writers are no less deserving of it, either. This fall, I plan to begin researching and sending applications out to residencies that truly focus on diversity by opening their doors wider than Bread Loaf does.
Here are more residencies, several of which have low applications fees and free stays.
12 responses
I agree that financial accessibility is vital to the idea of diversity, but I think picking on Breadloaf seems misguided. A conference like this is very expensive to organize and run. More and more, artists are asked to donate their skills and time, and asking participating authors and agents to attend on their own dime would be the only way to put on the same kind of program and get away from high fees. In the end, Breadloaf seems to find the right balance, by charging fees but still striving for financial accessibility through a number of fellowships, work study, and scholarship options. Options that I’d encourage this author to pursue. http://www.middlebury.edu/bread-loaf-conferences/bl_writers/applicationandacceptance
Thank you for your piece,Coleen. I didn’t think you were “picking on Breadloaf” so much as bringing to light the very important (and still too infrequently discussed) issues of class and gatekeeping. I’ll be sharing your thoughts; I found them valuable.
Coleen, terrific piece. I agree more has to be done to include poor writers, like me, like you. With the MFA explosion, a lot more clean normal office people are entering the ranks of “literary writers.” It’s all rather horrible. That said, Breadloaf must maintain its elite, fine literary status. Accepting students on scholarship because they are poor just won’t do. But they can do more to accept students who are poor AND excellent writers, like you. Here the poor factor is important. Literary writers have a tradition of having trouble paying the bills. Poverty is part of the art life.
This article leaves out a few salient points, and seems oddly targeted at one particular conference out of many. That stat for financial aid (5%) refers to all applicants, not only those who have been admitted (which is, I believe around 20%, maybe less–it’s very competitive). A much higher % of those in attendance go as scholars, fellows, work-study and other students with financial aid. A 300-word essay shouldn’t be too much work to receive a scholarship to a writing conference, given that most residencies require letters of rec, a CV, a publication list, and much longer essays. It is a writing conference, after all. This piece carries the implication that those in attendance are somehow lesser writers, which seems a little ill-informed. Also, it should be noted that those paying tuition are subsidizing those with funding, and to award more scholarships would mean that those attendees would have to pay even more. Many funded residencies (e.g.: Hedgebrook, Millay) have endowments. Bread Loaf and others with workshops and classes have to pay the faculty, whereas many residencies have no faculty. Also, there are other funding sources to check out such as AWP grants, money from institutions where attendees teach, and regional scholarships. Yes, more internal funding would be great, but it has to come from somewhere, and demonizing an institution because it charges fees doesn’t seem logical.
One of the whiniest pieces I’ve read online all year. Listening to an adult literally cry on paper is just pathetic. You have an MFA – was that free? People need to be compensated for their labor. A typical oversensitive snowflake. Poorly parented (given a misspelled “my child is SPECIAL” name) and got a ribbon for everything she did her whole life, then as an adult continues to bleat and whine and grouse and grumble and moan and pout like a child. The author needs to seriously grow the hell up. This comment will probably be censored because The Rumpus doesn’t like dissenting or critical points of view but the woman is clearly the product of Generation Me narcissism and entitlement right down the line which makes it that much more ironic that she thinks she’s criticizing entitlement. You want to go to Breadloaf, be good enough to earn a scholarship (or tuition remission or award or whatever that particular workshop/writing retreat calls it). Prestigious conferences are prestigious because not everyone gets to go. Join a writer’s group at a library or enroll at community college. Don’t be a sniveling groveler. You sound like the kid who didn’t get into his or her “reach” college and then claims that it’s too exclusive and elitist.
The standard to get a scholarship needs to be excellence only. But now there are so, so many people who are teeming to get in, to Breadloaf, etc., that really very few deserving writers are actually given financial help. Back in 2000, I was lucky enough to get a Tennessee Williams Scholarship to Sewanee. Now getting in is like winning the lottery. It’s almost impossible to attend if you don’t have the cash to spend, even if you are a great writer. This fact doesn’t mean that everybody who wants to go deserves help. But a lot more can be done to expand the resources for those great young writers left behind. Maybe it’s time for administrators to get creative. We’ve done our job as writers. Now it’s your turn.
Sean H: Hi, I’m the editor who worked with Coleen on this piece. You say you’re afraid your comment will be taken down because The Rumpus doesn’t like dissenting points of view. But I couldn’t disagree more — fittingly enough! I love dissenting points of view. We will be happy to leave your comment up, partly because I think you’re sort of hanging yourself by your own rope.
Colleen I think your piece was on point. I was grappling with the same conflicts myself this summer when I opened my email and found an invitation to join a writer’s retreat in New Zealand this fall. Duh, I would love to go, but I would have to take a second mortgage out on my home. In this instance, however, acceptance was guaranteed. The only stumbling block was the price. I think the financial inequity puts a wet blanket on many of the aspirational goals of such conferences.
I’ve been to various summer writing workshops and also serve on the board for one (lesser known nationally but popular regionally). It costs so much money to put on any kind of event, and writing workshops/retreats are no exception. Instructor fees, facility rentals, food, staff salaries and other costs all add up. Who should pay for that? In some ways, I think Bread Loaf may be one of the more accessible and diverse conferences I’ve attended simply because it offers so many kinds of financial aid.
Well four years ago after
Realizing that no conference
Or retreat would deal with a woman with children, I banded together with other writers of limited means, hires a teen to make
A camp for the kids, and decided to host my own conference. I’m happy to say 2016 will be the fifth year of the Wayward Writer Retreat. Each pays what they can and we trade
Off on meals. We punk rocked it and we are
Doing fine.
After reading this essay and comments a Robert Stone quip likening MFA lit grads to all the Second Lieutenants churned out by military colleges that flooding the battlefields during the Vietnam War came to mind. I wonder what he thought of networking conferences.
I just got in, and I’m taking out a loan to go, despite the loans I am still paying off for college. If you want to go to these things, it’s possible. It’s just harder work for some of us than others.
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