Residency

Aldo & Estella Leopold Residency

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

2024 Residency

Deadline for the May – October 2024 season is February 16, 2024.

HOW TO APPLY
Interested applicants may submit a maximum two-page resume along with a maximum 500-word statement of interest describing how your work at Mi Casita will extend the legacy of Aldo and Estella Leopold. Also, please indicate how you heard about the Residency Program. The deadline for the May – October 2024 season is February 16, with decisions made by March 22, 2024.

Please email application materials to Program Director Nina Simon. Direct any questions about the residency to Jeff Pappas, LWP Board Member and Residency Coordinator.

Announcement + Instructions

NOTE: A processing fee of $20 is required to qualify for review, to be submitted at the time of application either online (button below, payment processed via PayPal) or by check to:

Leopold Writing Program
P.O. Box 40122
Albuquerque, NM 87196
Attn: Residency

SUBMIT FEE

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, to reflect and write about the relevance of Aldo Leopold’s ideas to 21st century cultural and environmental issues In 2023, the Leopold Writing Program celebrates the 11th anniversary of this influential residency.

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.

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

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

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

ANNOUNCING

PAPERBACK EDITION OF A BOOK BY
PRIYANKA KUMAR
2020 Leopold Resident
A 2023 Firecracker Award Finalist
An Apple “November 2022 Best Books of the Month”

“Birds are my almanac.
They tune me into the seasons, and into myself.”

Tracing her movements across the American West, this stirring collection of essays brings the avian world richly to life .... [F]or Kumar, birds “become a portal to a more vivid, enchanted world.”
At a time when climate change, habitat loss, and the reckless use of pesticides are causing widespread extinction of species, Kumar’s reflections on these messengers from our distant past and harbingers of our future offer luminous evidence of her suggestion that “seeds of transformation lie dormant in all of our hearts. Sometimes it just takes the right bird to awaken us.”

A NEW BOOK BY
BEN GOLDFARB
2017 Leopold Resident
Published on September 12 by W.W. Norton

"Some 40 million miles of roadways encircle the earth, yet we tend to regard them only as infrastructure for human convenience. While roads are so ubiquitous they’re practically invisible to us, wild animals experience them as alien forces of death and disruption. A million animals are killed by American cars each day; creatures from antelope to salmon are losing their ability to migrate; and the noise of traffic deters songbirds from feeding. Yet road ecologists are also seeking to blunt the destruction through innovative solutions. Over many years, I met with the conservationists building bridges for mountain lions and tunnels for toads, the engineers deconstructing the logging roads that web national forests, and the community organizers undoing the havoc highways have wreaked upon American cities. Crossings is the culmination of a decade-long investigation into how humans have altered the natural world—and how we can create a better future for all beings."