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  • About Us
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    • Donate
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    • Brown Handler Writer's Residency ​
    • James C. Hormel LGBTQIA Fellowship
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Brown   Handler  Writer's   Residency  ​

At Friends of the San Francisco Public Library 
This Residency, funded by Lisa Brown and Daniel Handler's generosity, is designed to nurture emerging and established San Francisco based writers by guaranteeing them access to free, adequate space and bringing them into direct collaboration with the Library for literary activities. This program honors the vital connection between the public Library and the literary world.
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Lisa Brown and Daniel Handler

How to apply

By email only. Address correspondence to Vicky Lam at residency@friendssfpl.org. Please submit your CV, a short writing sample and two professional references along with brief responses to the questions in the application. This packet is designed to query both your current writing pursuits as well as challenges and opportunities the residency can address. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to the email above at any time. 

Timeline 
​
Application deadline [EXTENDED]:
​                          Sunday, February 5, 2023

Start or residency: March 2023
End of residency: February 2024
DOWNLOAD APPLICATION HERE
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From left: tanea lunsford lynx, Jenny Qi, Lindsey Smith, Douglas Henderson, and Preeti Vangani
There would be no libraries without writers--and there would be no writers without libraries.  We're very proud to help provide, in a city increasingly unaffordable to artists, a space in which our local writers can work, to ensure the survival of both. - Daniel Handler
2022-2023 Brown Handler Writers Residents 
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Doug Henderson is the author of The Cleveland Heights LGBTQ Sci-Fi and Fantasy Role Playing Club (University of Iowa Press), and a winner of the PEN/Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. His story, The Manga Artist, was runner-up for the Iowa Review Award for Fiction. Originally from Cleveland, he received his MFA from the University of San Francisco. He lives in the Castro District with his husband, and two children.​

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tanea lunsford lynx is a fourth-generation Black San Franciscan on both sides. tanea is a writer, educator, and cultural worker. She leads the Spoken Arts Department at Ruth Asawa School of the Arts and teaches Social justice and Ethnic Studies classes at City College of San Francisco. She is at work on her second book, a work of creative nonfiction. You can find her work online at tanealunsfordlynx.com.

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Jenny Qi is the author of Focal Point, winner of the 2020 Steel Toe Books Poetry Award. Her essays and poems have been published in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and elsewhere, and she has received fellowships and support from Tin House, Omnidawn, Kearny Street Workshop, and the San Francisco Writers Grotto. Born in Pennsylvania to Chinese immigrants, she grew up mostly in Las Vegas and Nashville and now lives in San Francisco, where she completed her Ph.D. in Cancer Biology. She is working on more essays and poems and translating her late mother’s memoirs of the Chinese Cultural Revolution and immigration to the U.S.

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Lindsey J. Smith is a freelance journalist and essayist from rural Sonoma County, currently based in San Francisco. Her writing explores how global warming is changing our relationships with the places we love. She is currently working on a book proposal that explores climate adaptation solution, known as "managed retreat", in California. She is a 2022 Kiplinger Fellow and has published work in Smithsonian, The Verge, Pacific Standard, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco magazine, Undark, and Wild Hope, among others.​

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Preeti Vangani grew up in Mumbai, India and is the author of Mother Tongue Apologize (RLFPA Editions, 2019), selected as winner of the RL Poetry Prize. Her poems have appeared in Threepenny Review, Gulf Coast, Hobart among other journals. And her work has been supported by Ucross, Djerassi and California Center for Innovation. An alumni of the program, she teaches at the MFA program at University of San Francisco and has worked as a Poet Mentor with Youth Speaks. Preeti is currently working on a manuscript of poems and a collection of short stories.   

Former Brown Handler Writer's Residents 
(2020-2021)
Yalitza Ferreras
Kristin Keane
Justine Mccauley
Ricco Villanueva Siasoco
Shelley Wong
PictureFrom left Shruti Swamy, Amanda Moore, Earle McCartney
(2019-2020)
Earle McCartney
Amanda Moore
Mia Paschal
Maddy Raskulinecz
Shruti Swamy

(2018 - 2019)
​Chaney Kwak
Kathleen McClung
Susie Nadler
Kevin Simmonds
K-Fai Steele

Podcast  Interviews

About

Friends & Foundation of the San Francisco Public Library and the San Francisco Public Library announce the creation of the Lisa Brown and Daniel Handler Writer’s Residency. Made possible by the generosity of Daniel Handler and Lisa Brown, the residency is designed to provide writers with free, adequate and accessible space in which to produce creative work, and to connect writers with the San Francisco Public Library in the course of producing and sharing their work in the community. 

Friends and the San Francisco Public Library have multiple interests in creating this residency: to nurture the creative expression of diverse writers; to engage writers with the Library as partners in creating and sharing work with the community; and to assist writers by providing writing studio space available at no cost at the Friends’ office.  
 
Reflecting the Library’s mission as a democratic, public and accessible institution, we are committed to supporting writers from a wide spectrum of ethnicity, race, gender, sexual orientation, ability and genre.  
 
Eligibility and Requirements Residencies will be offered to five writers for a period of one year, open to: 
• Fiction writers 
• Nonfiction writers 
• Children’s writers and illustrators 
• Poets 
​• Playwrights/screenwriters
Learn more about the 

James  C.  Hormel

​ LGBTQIA
​
​ Fellowship

Learn More
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