Residency

Aldo & Estella Leopold Residency

Aldo & Estella Leopold at "Mi Casita" in Tres Piedras, New Mexico, 1912. Photo courtesy of the Aldo Leopold Foundation.

The application process for the Aldo and Estella Leopold Residency has been suspended for 2023 but will resume later this year.
Please check our website in October for instructions to apply in 2024.

This is part of a scheduled maintenance project by the US Forest Service to upgrade Mi Casita, the Historic Aldo and Estella Leopold cabin.

LEOPOLD RESIDENCY

An inspiring one-month retreat based at historic "Mi Casita," Aldo and Estella's first home in New Mexico, the Aldo and Estella Leopold Residency provides a space for writers and respected thinkers committed to reshaping the cultural story about the relationship between humans and Nature.

Stay for up to one month during the months of May to October.
Receive a stipend to help defray travel and living expenses.

Give a public presentation at the Harwood Art Museum in Taos.

The Aldo & Estella Leopold Residency is for college students, graduate students, post-graduate students, and other emerging and mid-career professional writers from around the country and abroad interested in exploring connections in our communities and cultures, and in our lives and landscapes. Two residents per year are selected from a field of candidates who complete the application process.

Just as the Aldo Leopold Writing Contest builds a network of students who, because of their writing talent, have the potential to become the next generation’s environmental leaders, the Aldo & Estella Leopold Residency makes that network intergenerational by extending it beyond mid- to high-schoolers to emerging and mid-career professional writers. The two programs dovetail to deepen their combined cultural impact.

Mi Casita - Photo courtesy of US Forest Service

Thank you to our Partner

2023 Resident

GRETCHEN E. HENDERSON
2023: May 14-30 + September 3-17

2022 Resident

KIMBERLY RUFFIN
2022: Late May + July 28-Aug 10

Please scroll down for photos and more information about past Residents.

The trick, I suppose, is to contradict those who say vigilance is not necessary, while at the same time being careful not to declare any particular person or thing the enemy—that religion, this or that political party, a certain constituency, capitalism, this or that head of state. It would be to dismantle the stage upon which any tyrant, any self-anointed claimant to power, performed. It would be to direct the attention of his audience to a place where that tyrant has no authority, no influence.

Barry Lopez, Resistance