The Mississippi Arts Commission has awarded a $500,000 grant to the University of Mississippi Research Foundation for construction of an overnight writer studio for the university’s forthcoming Greenfield Farm Writers Residency.
Construction is set to begin this year on the retreat-style writers compound, which will provide Mississippi writers of all genres with time, seclusion and financial support to take on big projects including song cycles, movie scripts and novels.
“With this grant, our fundraising tops the $5 million mark,” says John T. Edge, Residency Developer and Director of The Mississippi Lab. “That support has come from University of Mississippi alumni, good readers from across the state, family trusts, corporate foundations and the state of Mississippi.”
Design for the Greenfield Farm Writers Residency, recently completed, includes six new buildings and two renovated buildings.
Writers-in-residence will be able to spend one to three weeks at the 20.4-acre property, which was once owned by acclaimed author William Faulkner. Designs for the writer studios by the award-winning firm Marlon Blackwell Architects, of Fayetteville, Arkansas, reimagine vernacular building idioms, such as the dogtrot and the shotgun, as modern spaces where writers will work.