Ucross
ABOUT
Ucross is a multidisciplinary artist residency on a 20,000-acre working ranch in the foothills of Wyoming's Bighorn Mountains, founded by oil executive and philanthropist Raymond Plank in 1981; the residency program itself began welcoming artists in 1983. Over more than four decades it has hosted upwards of 3,000 writers, visual artists, composers, choreographers, and interdisciplinary artists, including National Book Award winners, Pulitzer and Guggenheim recipients, and former U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo. It is now led by President and Executive Director Caitlin Addlesperger and is known both for the intensity of its isolation — small cohorts on remote ranchland — and for an increasingly formalized network of institutional partnerships (Yale's schools of art, drama, and music; the Institute of American Indian Arts; the Alley Theatre; PEN/Hemingway; the McKnight and MacColl Johnson foundations) that feed fellows into its program alongside its own juried selection.
Poets apply through Submittable (ucrossfoundation.submittable.com/submit) alongside fiction writers, nonfiction writers, playwrights, screenwriters, and artists in other disciplines; there is no separate poetry-only track, though poets are consistently represented in each cohort. Fellowships run two to six weeks, with only about ten artists in residence at any time, and are fully funded — private studio, private living quarters, chef-prepared meals, and a stipend to offset travel and expenses, so there is no residency fee to the artist (any application fee, if charged via Submittable, was not stated on the site). Selection is by an independent jury of artists, critics, and arts leaders, and competition is real: the foundation reports selecting roughly 60 fellows per cycle out of 1,000-plus applicants. Ucross also runs a dedicated Fellowship for Native American Artists and periodically opens named or partner-sponsored slots (e.g., with the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice, University of Wyoming's Haub School), which are worth watching for on the Opportunities page since they sometimes carry different eligibility or deadlines than the general pool.