Storyboard Residency
Monday, June 8, 2026 - Sunday, June 14, 2026
Saint Mary's College
Moraga, CA
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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 six-day 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.
The heart of your Storyboard experience will be four, two-hour generative workshops geared toward revision and generating new work, led by acclaimed writers and teachers Rachel Monroe, Nayomi Munaweera and Mychal Denzel Smith.
Vanessa Hua
Vanessa Hua is the author of the national bestsellers A River of Stars and Forbidden City, as well as Deceit and Other Possibilities, a New York Times Editors Pick. A National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow, she has also received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, California Arts Council Fellowship, and a Steinbeck Fellowship, among others. Previously, she was an award-winning columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, and The Atlantic. She teaches at the Warren Wilson MFA Program and elsewhere. Her novel, Coyoteland, and her narrative nonfiction, Uprooted, are forthcoming.
Alex Marzano-Lesnevich
Alex Marzano-Lesnevich is the author of The Fact of a Body, which received a Lambda Literary Award, the Chautauqua Prize, the Grand Prix des Lectrices Elle, the Prix des Libraires du Quebec, and the Prix France Inter-JDD. Their essays appear in The Best American Essays 2020 and 2022 editions, as well as many magazines and journals. A 2023 United States Artist fellow and three-time fellow at both MacDowell and Yaddo, they live in Vancouver, where they teach at the University of British Columbia. Their next book is the transgender and trans-genre memoir Both and Neither, forthcoming from Doubleday and publishers internationally.
Sierra Crane Murdoch
Sierra Crane Murdoch is the author of Yellow Bird: Oil, Murder, and a Woman’s Search for Justice in Indian Country, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the winner of an Oregon Book Award, and named one of the 100 Notable Books of 2020 by The New York Times. Her reporting and essays have appeared on This American Life and in Harper’s, as well as in VQR, The Paris Review, The New Yorker online, The Atlantic, and others. Her second book, Imaginary Brightness: An Autobiography of American Innocence, is forthcoming from Random House.
Carvell Wallace
Carvell Wallace is a writer and podcaster who has contributed to The New Yorker, GQ, New York Times Magazine, Pitchfork, MTV News, and Al Jazeera. His debut memoir, Another Word For Love (MCD, 2024), is a Kirkus Finalist in Nonfiction and a winner of the PEN Oakland prize. He was a 2019 Peabody Award nominee, a 2022 National Magazine Award Finalist, a 2023 winner of the Mosaic Prize in Journalism, and a 2025 UCross Fellow. He lives in Oakland.
Six Days of Inspiration and Insights
Our days and nights at Storyboard will also include a number of dynamic craft seminars, lectures, panels and presentation from leading writers and editors.
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 six-day residential experience on the campus of Saint Mary’s College of California in the San Francisco Bay Area from Monday, June 8th through Sunday, June 14th, 2026.
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 2026
Priority Deadline: January 5, 2026
Extended Deadline: March 1, 2026
Admissions Decisions: April 1, 2026
Questions? Contact storyboard@stmarys-ca.edu.