Things I'm Bad At: Residencies - by Carmen Maria Machado

The thing about residencies is this: if you tell a non-artist about them, they make no fucking sense. The same is true of MFAs. When I told my scientist father that I was going to school for writing and they were paying me to do it, he simply did not believe me. He said, “I’ve never heard of such a thing.” I’m pretty sure he still has the vague sense that the entire enterprise is a scam. And I guess it makes sense, if you live in a country where we do not collectively give two shits about art, that the idea of anyone being paid or otherwise supported to make it seems laughable. But here I am, in a studio on a beautiful piece of land in upstate New York with a collection of poets, essayists, novelists, painters, composers. We are staying in and around a mansion, once owned by the family who founded and funded this place. We get three meals a day, one of which—dinner—is a brief moment of socialization. (Every lunch, somewhat famously, includes a tiny bag of raw carrot sticks, a snack I n

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• Bridget Coady