About the Fellowship
This fully-funded residency of up to two weeks was generously established by poet and VCCA Fellow Barbara Crooker to support an artist of any discipline who is also caring for an ill or disabled spouse, child, or other family member. The VCCA residency at Mt. San Angelo includes a private bedroom with en-suite bath, a separate individual studio, and three meals a day in a community of cross-disciplinary artists.
Crooker first came to VCCA as a Fellow in 1990. She says, “In ‘real life,’ I’m the caregiver of my son, who has autism, and without VCCA, I’d never have written anything, let alone nine books. It took me so long to get a first book (25 years, but who’s counting). But it finally happened, and other books followed.”
Application Details
Eligibility: Writers, visual artists, and composers who are caregivers to an ill or disabled spouse, an ill or disabled child, or another ill or disabled family member
Residencies Available: January – April 2026
Length of Fellowship: Up to two weeks with flexible scheduling
Application Opens: February 1, 2025
Application Deadline: May 15, 2025
Application Fee*: $30
Notification by: August 31, 2025
To be considered as a Barbara Crooker Caregiving Fellow, complete the “Application for Mt. San Angelo Residencies, VCCA in Virginia – Winter 2025,” selecting your fellowship interest in Question 2.
* If the application fee presents a significant barrier to application, please write to vcca@vcca.com by May 10, 2025, to request an application fee waiver.
Alexandra Viets Named Inaugural Barbara Crooker Caregiving Fellow
About Barbara Crooker
Barbara Crooker is a poetry editor for Italian Americana and author of nine books; Some Glad Morning (Pitt Poetry Series) is the latest. Her awards include the Best Book of Poetry 2018 from Poetry by the Sea, the WB Yeats Society of New York Award, the Thomas Merton Poetry of the Sacred Award, and three Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowships. Her work appears in a variety of anthologies, including The Bedford Introduction to Literature.