Please join the Black Mountain Institute for a panel discussion about artists’ statements – what they are, how to write them, and best practices for successful applications. Our panel is made up of leaders from three acclaimed residencies – Sarah Audsley from Vermont Studio Center, Courtney Bethel from MacDowell, and Ignatius Valentine Aloysius from Ragdale. Moderated by writer Krista Diamond, the panel will also take questions from the audience.

Sarah Audsley is the author of Landlock X (Texas Review Press, 2023). A Korean American adoptee, a graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, and a member of The Starlings Collective, Audsley lives and works in northern Vermont where she is the Writing Program Manager at Vermont Studio Center.

Courtney Bethel is the Admissions Director at MacDowell, a contemporary leader in the field of artists’ residency programs whose mission has been advancing artistic freedom since 1907. For more than 20 years she has guided the application experience for artists; successfully transitioning the application to an online, paperless process. Bethel’s responsibilities include overseeing more than 4,000 applications a year, and coordinating a selection process that fields rotating admissions panels in seven disciplines twice a year. Bethel currently serves as a member of MacDowell’s Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Access Task Force. Before joining MacDowell in 2000, Bethel served as an information coordinator with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps at Women Together/Mujeres Unidas in McAllen, Texas and as an intern with the International Rescue Committee in London, UK.

Ignatius Valentine Aloysius earned his MFA in Creative Writing from Northwestern University, where he teaches writing and experimentation. He is the author of the literary novel Fishhead. Republic of Want (Tortoise Books, 2020), and his prose and poetry have appeared in or are forthcoming in Cold Mountain Review, Olney Magazine, Thanatos Review, Roi Fainéant Press, Trampset, Tofu Ink Arts Press, the Coalition for Digital Narratives, and Porter Gulch Review among others. Ignatius is a host and curator of the long-running reading series Sunday Salon Chicago. He serves as a new Co-chair of the Curatorial Board at Ragdale Foundation, an arts residency in Lake Forest, Illinois, where he is also its newest Board of Trustees member. A resident of Evanston, Ignatius is currently shopping his second novel manuscript, and a poetry collection that he co-wrote with David Allen Sullivan, poet laureate of Santa Cruz, CA. 

Questions? Please email blackmountaininstitute@unlv.edu or call (702) 895-5542.