Ra Malika Imhotep at A Studio in the Woods

Ra Malika Imhotep at A Studio in the Woods

Ra Malika Imhotep was awarded an Emerging Writers’ Artistic Residency at A Studio in the Woods. A Studio in the Woods, a program of Tulane University’s ByWater Institute, is one of the leading artistic and academic residency programs in the Gulf South region. The Studio fosters creative responses to the challenges of our time by providing retreat to artists, scholars, and the public in their protected forest on the Mississippi River. Malika received the residency to work on a hybrid work of creative nonfiction that speaks to and with “the illustrious Negro dead” inspired by correspondence between Zora Neale Hurston and W.E.B DuBois.

From Malika:

“I will most remember the aliveness of the woods. How even the blown over pecan tree’s exposed root system was hosting its own kind of ‘liveliness.’ I came here to begin the work of writing a cemetery so I knew it was gonna be heavy stuff. Being in the woods at the turn of spring allowed me the space to play and find pleasure in and alongside the work. Having this week ‘outside’ of my normal life was a true goddess-send. Here I felt through a few stages of grief in record time. I cried, I wrote, I collaged, I played with watercolors and (perhaps most importantly) I let my bodymind rest.” – Ra Malika Imhotep

Find out more about her residency here.