follow

Read the Blog

CONNECT

NAVIGATE

Lafayette Flats
Boutique Vacation Rentals

New River Gorge Winter Writer Residency

October 10, 2014

When we pondered what the Lafayette Flats’ first ever off-season is going to be like we pictured it to be quiet. People certainly come to the Gorge in the winter, but in far fewer numbers. We remembered last winter, when we were still working on the building every weekend, the streets were mostly empty in the evenings and the license plates on the few cars that were in town mostly were WV instead of the typical in-season mixed offerings of PA, VA, NY, NJ, OH and Ontario. Thinking through the ways that we could take advantage of the solitude that the winter offers we landed on the thought of a Writer in Residence program where we would select a writer and afford he or she with the opportunity to live and work in one of our flats during the slow season.

We researched other writer residency programs and talked to our neighbor, Colleen Anderson, who is a writer that has taken part in such programs. We were encouraged by Colleen’s enthusiastic support for the idea, and took it to heart when she said that such experiences are very meaningful to writers. It began to feel like a natural extension of the support for the arts that we always intended for Lafayette Flats, but instead of patronizing visual artists we would be supporting the literary arts.

The first thing we had to decide is the time frame for the residency. We chose January 1 through March 31 and reserved Flat #2 Corten for that time period. Of course, since this is the first winter that Lafayette Flats will be open, we really have no way to judge whether removing the flat from the market for three months will cause us to miss out on rental opportunities, but if so then we’ll consider the lost income as our gift to the arts.

We quickly realized that, other than this possible lost income, there was going to be very little downside to hosting the residency. We already have to keep the building heated and it would actually be a nice thing to have someone stay at the building in the coldest months making sure the water is flowing and systems are working. We began to think of the residency as “why not?’ proposition and wondered if we had missed any obvious downsides. As of this writing, we still have not thought of any.

We announced the residency program in September and accepted applications through October 1st. We had some very good applications and the choice was not easy to make, but in the end one writer stood out.

And very soon, in the next few days, we will be announcing who that writer is. Stay tuned!

comments +

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


171 N. Court Street
Fayetteville, WV 25840
(304) 900-3301