In Writers House, I found the perfect writing retreat - a spot that is out of the fray, where you can slip away into your imagination. I revised a big chunk of my novel, THE SLIP, in one of the upstairs bedrooms and on the front porch, and know it would’ve taken me so much longer without that wonderful month away. It’s truly a little bit magic.
Lucas Shaefer
Author of The Slip, newly released by Simon and Schuster
As a violinist, composer, and writer, the Corsicana Residency provided invaluable refuge and creative inspiration. While living in the lovingly restored Writers House, I composed and premiered music for solo violin. The title, A SONIC ARC, is an anagram of CORSICANA, and the piece is a love letter to this special community. I feel so fortunate to have had the privilege of composing music and working on my first book in this exceptional setting for artistic work.
Tricia Park
Violinist / Writer Educator
PhD, 3rd year, Program for Writers ,University of Illinois Chicago
BM and MM, The Julliard School
MFA, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
The Writers House was a place I thrived in while at residency in Corsicana. I completed the first of Two Nocturnes in the light-filled piano room, a work which will premiere this August at the UFPB Chamber Music Festival in Brazil. The house is spacious and welcoming and very comfortable. From greeting Halloween trick-or-treaters on the porch, to reading out in the sun on the quiet street corner, to working in the music space, making a meal in the well-equipped kitchen, to eating outside on the back step and walking through the neighborhood, I became a part of it and it a part of me. May it continue to be a vital part of the life in Corsicana.
Gregory Mertl
Composer . Four Glimpses Music . New Milford, CT
Writers House was the perfect writing retreat. Stately and beautiful, I had plenty of space to writer, roam, and think. It was an incredibly productive month. I wrote a new short story and essay in that time, which would have been impossible otherwise. Nancy was the consummate steward and host, and because of The House’s affiliation with the Corsicana Artist and Writer Residency, I was welcomed into the creative fold of Corsicana, meeting fellow creatives, and befriending the Artists-in-Residence there. It was truly a one-of-a-kind experience, providing me with both solitude and community. I had a great time.
Helen Georgas
My writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Prairie Fire: A Canadian Magazine of New Writing, Hyperallergic, The Brooklyn Rail, and elsewhere.
I love Corsicana, this place is never expected to love and want to return to, and The Writers House is truly a magical place. I was in the midst of writing the most difficult book I’d ever attempted and staying in The Writers House helped push me across the finish line. I finished Beings, my new novel, while sitting in the back of the house, looking at the vintage Airstream, listening to the birds and bugs making their sundown sounds in the trees. I woke up each morning the house wanting to stay in that suspended moment of absolute peace that I felt there, and I finished every night climbing into bed feeling like I’d spent the day well— not only in work, but also in meditative, restorative, and creative rest. If I could spend a month or two at The Writers House every year for the rest of my life, I think I’d be the happiest person in the world. I hope it’s able to survive and thrive and continue to inspire, comfort, hold, and welcome writers and thinkers and dreamers
Ilana Masad
Author of All My Mother’s Lovers and Beings.
I was indeed there, one memorable night when we brought down Eve Hill-Agnus, or more to the point it was one very memorable morning when Gregory Mertl made fancy oatmeal for the scientist, the writer, and me and we talked about absolutely everything including the unlikely circumstances in which a composer would set prose. I think about it still. I still correspond with the composer, and I’ve since stayed with the writer in Paris. Every breakfast, every conversation, every chance encounter should be that breakfast.
…there is nowhere I would rather be.
Kendra Greene
Author of No Less Strange or Wonderful:Essays in Curiosity
When I arrived at Writers House, I knew I’d stepped through the door of something special. The grand scale of this historical gem boasts hardwood floors, stained glass, and enormous porches but it also sits on a quiet block where the only sounds I heard in two weeks were the occasional call of a barred owl and the mournful horn of a distant, passing train. Sitting in an antique chair, I sometimes wondered who else wrote or created there, but mostly, I worked on the final draft of my memoir. Writing is a solitary practice, but I never felt alone a Writers House; the spirits of the past in the big, beautiful home kept me company.
Mindy Uhrlaub
Author of Last Nerve: A Memoir of Illness and the Endurance of Family
What was planned to a be a work retreat in Writers House, exploring textile heritage in a bodily context and a theme around debutante dresses turned into a community art project, a theatrical fashion show.
Writers House became a creative studio with fabrics all over and a sewing workshop with people from town, who also came in to try on their outfits for the big show at Terry Fator Theatre: Surrealist Couture of the Backland Prairie.
All this happened because of the wild and crazy inspiring energy from visual artist Nancy Rebal and writer David Searcy. An unforgettable stay in a magic house which I love every inch of.
Anne Damgaard
Fabrikken for Kunst of Design . Copenhagen, Denmark
With its airy rooms, natural light, and rich architectural history, the Writers House provides writers not only a place to work, but a refuge for thinking, reading, and imagining — all necessary components to any practice. During my own stay, an afternoon spent journaling on the porch often led to a chance encounter with a new neighbor, soon to become a new friend. There are few sites in our modern world that offer inspiration, peace, and community in equal measure, and I’m so lucky to have spent a month in one of them.
Leigh Gallagher
Author of the novel Who You Might Be (Henry Holt, 2022)
For the Writers House of Corsicana
There are houses that choose you.
Places you arrive at without knowing what you’re looking for —
and leave transformed.
The Writers House is one of those.
I felt welcomed there as if stepping into an ancient dream.
It became my den,
my refuge for creation.
— timeworn wood,
light filtered through stained glass,
hundreds of books watching over the silences.
A rare calm, almost sacred.
The kind of calm that listens to you write.
It is a house with a soul.
Not just because it is beautiful,
but because it has been loved.
Loved in the hands of those who restored it,
in the heirloom furniture,
the shelves filled with forgotten voices,
the baby grand piano in the living room,
the books rescued from the brink of disappearance.
Loved by a community of artist and creators
who shared an extraordinary vision.
It is a place where stories find their way.
Where words once lost
return quietly,
like golden dust settling on a windowsill.
It lives now in our pages, in our films,
in the return of our creative energy,
in the memory of morning coffee on the porch
and the nights we stayed awake,
just to listen to the walls breathe.
Thanks you to those who dreamed it, built it, shared it.
Thank you to the house itself,
for its quiet magic.
It remains within me. Always.
Mathilde Lavenne
Artist/Réalisatrice . France