2024 NY State Summer Writers Institute kitchen work scholarship opportunity

Press Announcement | March 1, 2024

kitchen work to sponsor three full, two-week scholarships to study non-fiction prose with Phillip Lopate at this summer’s 2024 New York State Summer Writers Institute at Skidmore, held June 23 to July 6. Applications due March 15. Press release and details on how to apply below.

From Kitchen work EDITOR, Matthew Straus

Fifteen or twenty years ago, I was lucky enough to encounter the writer Phillip Lopate in a classroom. My life changed forever. It was my second or third enrollment in a non-fiction prose workshop, which lasted for two weeks, at the New York State Summer Writers Institute, hosted each July since 1987 by Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, NY. Every instructor I have met at the Institute over the years has been fascinating, intuitive, deeply humane. For me, Phillip occupies still yet a different level; not just as a prolific author and brilliant editor, but as a maestro of a workshop instructor.

I am a non-fiction junkie, and have been for many years. I loved essay writing when I was in school, and over the years have revered masters like Joan Didion, Edward Abbey, Matthew Arnold, Barbara Kingsolver, Michel de Montaigne, MFK Fisher. These writers, as much as Phillip Lopate, and my other NYSSWI non-fiction instructors, Sue Halpern and Jim Miller— program director and Salmagundi Magazine editor Robert Boyers most of all, have been the biggest inspirations to me in the work of assembling and editing kitchen work magazine.

It is by magical happenstance that kitchen work is now able to announce the sponsorship of three full, two-week tuitions ($2,020) to study non-fiction prose with Phillip Lopate at this summer’s 2024 New York State Summer Writers Institute at Skidmore, held from June 23 to July 6.

Please consider submitting an application to study food writing, tuition-free, with one of the greatest instructors in the world, and please don't hesitate to forward this email to anyone you know who might like to attend the Institute.

Happy writing and cooking!

Apply for a Kitchen work Scholarship

Scholarship awardees will have their essays published in an upcoming issue of Kitchen Work.