Storyboard Residency
Monday, June 7 - Sunday, June 13, 2027
Saint Mary's College
Moraga, CA
APPLICATIONS OPEN NOVEMBER 1ST, 2027
Founded by writers working at the intersection of art, research and reporting, Storyboard emerges from the belief that ambitious projects rooted in fact—be they memoirs, historical novels, reportage, biographies, documentary poems, or anything in between—are vital to the public good and the literary landscape. And we know that writers cannot undertake these important projects in isolation.
Join a small cohort of likeminded writers for a week-long residency at Saint Mary’s College of California. Our goal is to provide a supportive week of mentorship, inspiration and co-conspiracy for writers working on fact-based creative projects in any genre—an experience that will fuel their projects long after the residency has ended.
What is Storyboard?
The Storyboard Residency is an immersive week of generative workshops, craft seminars and literary events organized to give writers new ideas, proven research methods and fresh ways of approaching their fact-based creative projects. Whether you’re an experienced writer or someone just conceptualizing their first project, Storyboard provides the time and space necessary to develop, plan, revise and reflect upon your idea, your craft, and the path to publication.
This residential intensive promises deeper connections with fellow writers working at the intersection of research, reporting and imagination—and editors who help those projects find an audience. Your days and nights at the residency will include:
- Three, two-hour generative workshops geared toward revision and generating new work
- Daily craft talks and presentations that shed light on new ways of approaching research, reporting, storytelling, ethics and language
- A manuscript consultation (up to 3,000 words) with a faculty member
- Panels with writers and editors to demystify the publication and editorial processes, understand how to plan and fund our research, and build stamina for a long-haul creative endeavor
- Conversations with writers, filmmakers and visual artists on their work, how it was made, and its reverberations in the world
- Ample time for writing, reading, reflecting and connecting with faculty and your fellow participants
Why Storyboard?
Writing a creative work rooted in facts is a long-term project that requires a blend of inspiration and discipline, spontaneity and process, isolation and co-conspiracy.
The goal is for this six-day period to catalyze the next steps in your research, writing and creation.
This residency is for:
- Experienced journalists looking to expand their work into an artful, book-length project
- Creative writers (fiction writers, memoirists, poets, etc) looking to infuse their art with reporting or research methods
- Academics looking to broader their writing to a more general audience
- Writers knee-deep in an ambitious, long-form writing project looking for community, guidance and inspiration
- Writers at the early stages of a project who need support figuring out how to chart a path forward
- Writers who didn’t attend an MFA or journalism program and who are looking for structure and support for their project
- Anyone working in isolation on an ambitious, fact-based writing project who is seeking community and connection
Who We Are
Storyboard is led by award winning authors, journalists and editors committed to urgent, beautiful, fact-based writing and the ability for such work to make a meaningful impact in the world.
Lauren Markham (Co-director) is an award-winning writer based in California whose journalism and essays regularly appear in outlets such as Harper's, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine and VQR, where she is a contributing editor. She is the author of the award-winning The Far Away Brothers: Two Young Migrants and the Making of an American Life, the critically-acclaimed A Map of Future Ruins: On Borders and Belonging, which was the runner up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and Immemorial, which was longlisted for the Pen America Jean Stein Award. She is currently working on a narrative nonfiction book about bunker mentality as well as an historical novel based in early California.
Chris Feliciano Arnold (Co-director) has written essays and journalism for The Atlantic, Harper's, The New York Times, Outside, Sports Illustrated, Vice News, The Believer, Folha de S. Paulo and more. The recipient of a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, he has published fiction in Playboy, The Kenyon Review, Ecotone and other magazines. Along the way, his work has been noted in The Best American Sports Writing and The Best American Short Stories. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area where he is Director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Saint Mary’s College of California.
Cora Kircher (Program Coordinator) is a writer and educator from New York's Hudson Valley and the Storyboard Fellow at Saint Mary's College of CA, where she is an MFA candidate in Fiction. Her writing has appeared in Nat. Brut, Lullaby Machine, BRUISER Magazine, A CLEARING, and elsewhere, and in 2025 was shortlisted for the Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize.
2027 Faculty & Guests
The heart of your Storyboard experience will be three, two-hour generative workshops geared toward revision and generating new work, led by acclaimed writers and teachers.
Mychal Denzel Smith
Mychal Denzel Smith
is the author of the New York Times bestseller Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching (2016) and Stakes Is High (2020), winner of the Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction, and the forthcoming From Virginia (2027). His work has appeared in Harper's, Oxford American, The Believer, n+1, Bookforum, GQ, Esquire, New York Magazine, New Republic, The Atlantic, New York Times, and in the anthology “The Year’s Best Sports Writing 2025”.
R. O. Kwon
R. O. Kwon
is the author of the nationally bestselling novel Exhibit, a New York Times Editors’ Choice and the recipient of a Lambda Literary Prize. Kwon’s bestselling first novel, The Incendiaries, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Award. She coedited the bestselling Kink, and her books have been translated into seven languages and named a best book of the year by over forty publications. She co-founded and teaches with the collective The Ministry of Words. Born in Seoul, Kwon has lived most of her life in the United States.
Michelle Tea
Michelle Tea
is the author of over a dozen books of memoir, fiction, poetry and children's lit — including her latest, Knocking Myself Up. Her memoir Valencia won the Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Fiction, even though it was obviously all true. It was also made into a sprawling, feature-length art film using nearly 20 different directors and different Michelles. Her recent-ish essay collection, Against Memoir, was awarded the PEN/America Diamonstein-Speilvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. She is also the recipient of the legendary Rona Jaffe Awards, and a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow.
Marcelo Hernandez Castillo
Marcelo Hernandez Castillo
is the author of Cenzontle (BOA Editions), Children of the Land (Harper Collins), Dulce (Northwestern University Press), and co-editor of Here to Stay: Poetry and Prose from the Undocumented Diaspora (Harper Perennial). His work has been longlisted for the California Book Award, the Lambda Literary Award, the Publishing Triangle’s Thom Gunn Award for Gay poetry, and the Foreword Indies Prize, among others. He is a co-founder of the Undocupoets organization, which eliminated citizenship requirements from all first poetry book prizes in the country.
PAST FACULTY
- Alex Marzano-Lesnevich (2026)
- Vanessa Hua (2026)
- Carvell Wallace (2026)
- Sierra Crane-Murdoch (2026)
- Mychal Denzel Smith (2025)
- Nayomi Munaweera (2025)
- Rachel Monroe (2025)
A Week of Inspiration and Insights
Our days and nights at Storyboard will include a number of dynamic craft seminars, lectures, panels and presentation from leading writers and editors.
Previous Guest Writers and Editors
Craft Seminars
Keenan Norris, Rachel Richardson, Bonnie Tsui and others on the challenges of fact-based creative projects in fiction, creative nonfiction and poetry.
Guest Lectures and Presentations
Chris Feliciano Arnold, Lauren Markham and others share insights from their own research and reporting.
Editing and Publishing Talks
Marthine Satris of Heyday Books, Maddie Oatman of Mother Jones and other editors on what they're looking for in fact-based projects.
Where and When
Storyboard is a one-week residential experience on the campus of Saint Mary’s College of California in the San Francisco Bay Area from Monday, June 7th through Sunday, June 13th, 2027.
Costs
Storyboard tuition is $3,000. The experience includes on-campus accommodations and meals, participation in a three-day workshop, access to all panels, craft seminars and events, a manuscript consultation with one of our faculty, seminar leaders or expert panelists, and social gatherings throughout the week.
Accommodations
Participants will stay on campus in ADA accessible dormitories with single bedrooms and shared bathroom and kitchen spaces. Breakfast, lunch and dinner on campus will be included—and the campus café, pub and bookstore will be open for informal gatherings throughout the week.
Truth. Beauty. Work.
Beyond the Residency: Storyboard Seminar
Working on a longer project, and interested in spending the year post-residency making headway? Consider applying for the Storyboard Seminar.
LEARN MORE
Storyboard 2027
Priority Deadline: January 15, 2027
Final Deadline: March 1, 2027
Admissions Decisions: April 15, 2027
Questions? Contact storyboard@stmarys-ca.edu.