Hacking away at a keyboard is a solitary business, as any fiction writer knows. It's one reason why universities and artists' colonies sponsor writer-in-residence programs, to provide the stimulation of a larger intellectual community and the chance to mentor students or other writers.
Virtual residencies are the latest development in the literary world -- asynchronous writing workshops in which authors read student manuscripts and send back comments via email -- and some authors say they prefer them to physical residencies.
"The text gets more of a chance to speak online," said Brooklyn-based poet Alan Sondheim author of the book Disorders of the Real and co-moderator of the email list "Fiction of Philosophy." "In terms of focusing on the words, rather than worrying about the problems of personal dynamics within a classroom where egos are at stake, online residencies are the best."
This week, Sondheim was named as one of the first three virtual writers-in-residence at trAce, an active online community of writers headquartered in Nottingham, England. His tenure begins 1 September. TrAce, which also includes members from the United States, Australia, and 60 other nations from Singapore to Venezuela, was founded in 1995 by novelist Sue Thomas with a US$500,000 grant from the Arts Council of England.
There are other online residencies, such as Literature Online or the Australian Network of Art and Technology. But there are two things that set trAce apart from its predecessors, according to Thomas.
Each week, its virtual writers-in-residence engage in live, online chat sessions with trAce community members. Residents are also required to create new work and document their progress in a journal regularly posted on the trAce home page.
"This way we really get the opportunity to work beside them," said Thomas, whose first novel, Correspondence, was short-listed for the 1992 Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction. "Residencies are about artists sharing their skills, after all." On 12 February, trAce hosts the first in a series of online workshops featuring its current virtual writer-in-residence Christy Sheffield Sanford, a recipient of a National Endowment of the Arts fellowship and a recent winner of The Well's "Best Hyperlinked Work on the Web."
After stumbling upon an announcement for a trAce-sponsored hypertext writing competition in a newsletter, the Florida-based Sheffield Sanford said she was "impressed by ... the general level of outreach, and the variety of offerings" the trAce community provided. For example, it offers online mentoring for poets that includes a cash stipend of 200 British pounds, to be applied toward Internet access costs.
Sheffield Sanford said its online residencies give writers the chance to present carefully polished, thoughtful responses to students. "Working through email and online workshops inspires an intense type of focus," she said.
Sheffield Sanford will concentrate on creating Web-specific work during her residency, most likely in the vein of her recent compositions, such as the love poem "Light and Dust." She said she also plans to experiment with Dreamweaver and dynamic HTML so she "can have tandem, simultaneous, or staggered images and/or text on a page."
The third new trAce writer-in-residence is British novelist and scriptwriter Alan McDonald, whose virtual tenure begins 1 April 2000. McDonald created "Unholy Island," a complex hypertext novel.
Not all of its residencies are online. In June 1999, Bernard Cohen -- twice included on the Sydney Morning Herald's list of "Best Young Australian Novelists," will spend six months at trAce's Nottingham base.
The focus of his residency is also Web-specific. In live classes and tutorials, Cohen will teach UK-based writers how to use the Web in their work. He will also participate in weekly online chat sessions and regular online writing workshops.
"Since we at trAce consider ourselves operating online, we're interested in virtual life, specifically," explained Thomas. "But in the end, it's not about keeping the two worlds apart -- it's about enabling fluid movement between them."
