Renowned author, quasi-pugilist, and wife-stabber Norman Mailer was a longtime resident of Provincetown. This summer, dozens of lucky writers are honing their craft in Mailer’s former home there. It's the inaugural year of the Norman Mailer Writers Colony. Here’s a little about how that colony came to be, as well as how it’s going this summer.
“This is our last stand against technology,” Norman Mailer told his friend Larry Schiller in October 2007. The renowned and reviled writer—author of, among many other books and articles, The Naked and the Dead, The Executioner's Song, and The Armies of the Night—had just emerged from surgery and weighed less than 100 pounds, but had coached his nurses on their writing skills from his hospital bed. Mailer died the next month—but his legacy lives on in many ways.
At a reception after Mailer’s funeral, the idea of a writer’s colony came up in discussions among friends about what might happen to the author’s house in Provincetown. Schiller ran the concept past Mailer’s family, who loved it.
Schiller documented Mailer’s writing room in a photograph, feeling “so alone” without his friend. He recruited writers, including Günter Grass, Joan Didion, William Kennedy, and Doris Kearns Goodwin, to help build the colony.
As Schiller puts it, “The vision of the Colony was to keep alive the endangered serious writer.” The collective began by establishing writing awards for high school and university students, then began accepting applications for the colony. We spoke with Schiller briefly about the process of creating the colony and his feelings about how well the colony has been going this summer. Read more after the jump!
The colony took about nine months of planning following the initial establishment of the writing awards. Collegiate sponsors include the Ransom Center, UMass Lowell, UCLA, and Harvard. There are two aspects to the colony: the workshops and the fellowships. Workshops are conducted in the summer by faculty members with personal connections to Mailer; “they come to the table with a certain amount of expertise,” according to Schiller. Year-round fellowships allow seasoned writers time in the Mailer home to work on their craft.
There were nearly 500 applications from around the world for about 60 workshop spots in this inaugural year. Schiller calls the applicants an “extraordinary, diverse" group. Applications were reviewed anonymously by members of the Michener Center for Writers at UT. Participants come from Dubai, Ireland, France, and even farther, and range in occupation from professional journalists to college freshmen. Schiller has been “amazed and surprised” by the quality and dedication of the admitted participants. “It is an inspiration” to see them work, he says.
Not only is Schiller impressed with the participants, but the participants are impressed with the colony experience. Schiller read me a long, laudatory letter detailing one participant’s thrill at visiting Mailer’s writing room and reading in his living room. But perhaps that person’s favorite part of working in Mailer’s house? The chance to dine at the same table where Norman Mailer once ate chicken salad.
The deadlines for this year’s workshops passed in April, but keep an eye on the colony’s website this winter for more information about applying.
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