Helen Benedict was recently interviewed by Allan Wolper on his on demand program  Conversations With Allan Wolper .   http://www.wbgo.org/wolper Helen has written extensively about women in the military in both her nonfiction book,  The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women in Iraq , which won the attention of the Pentagon and the White House, and her novel,  Sand Queen ,  which  NPR called “one of this year’s [2013]   best  novels about war.  Her exposure of sexual assault in the military inspired the Oscar nominated 2012 documentary, The Invisible War. A professor of journalism at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, Helen was named one of the "21 leaders for the 21st" Century by Womens eNews in 2013.  She also won the Ida B. Wells Award for Bravery in Journalism that same year. Helen was also on Huffpost Live’s #WMN hosted by Caroline Modarressy-Tehrani discussing the high unemployment rate,...

WG Clark, the Edmund Schureman Campbell Professor of Architecture at the University of Virginia and a revered architect has assigned his studio students VCCA as their project this term. When you think about it, an artists’ community is the perfect subject for architecture students, combining as it does both living and working areas on a large scale. So it’s no surprise that Clark has assigned VCCA before. But this time, he added a twist by moving it to the heart of Philadelphia. This is purely hypothetical; there are no plans to move VCCA into Philadelphia or any urban setting. The board and staff are well aware of the value placed on VCCA’s pastoral setting by its Fellows! Clark’s view of an urban creative crucible is informed by his love of Philadelphia, the city where he began his career, working for Robert Venturi. In addition to its metropolitan charms, Clark also greatly admires William Penn’s benevolent vision of a city of brotherly love. At the beginning of term,...

Those arriving at VCCA will notice a welcome addition along San Angelo Drive: two of Lorca Morello's limestone totems has been installed beside the road to join the two others already there. The sculptures had broken a number of years ago and were languishing in the barn waiting for a little TLC. Enter Adelbert Heil a sculptor from Bamberg, Germany who has been in residence since October 3. Frustrated because the materials he had shipped from Germany were significantly delayed, Adel made the best of it, producing an impressive showing of his work for our fall open studios event using You Tube videos, photographs and a single plaster sculpture he whipped up. His can-do attitude also came to the fore when overlapping with Lorca for just one night, their conversation over dinner turned to the sad state of her sculptures. Donated to VCCA by Lorca in 1988, The Moon Tree Series comprises four sculptures that were placed in the front field and designed to be also used as ...

Marion Belanger ’s work is included in The Female Gaze: A Survey of Photographs by Women from the 19th to the 21st Centuries at Haverford College’s Atrium Gallery in the Marshall Fine Arts Center. Women have been involved in the photographic medium’s history almost from the beginning working across photographic genres including portraits, travel, landscape, documentary and conceptual photography. Women photographers have played an important role not only in the making of photographs, but also in the very invention of the medium. The same cannot be said for other visual media. “The creative impact of women photographers as diverse as Julia Margret Cameron in the 19th century, Bernice Abbott in the 20th century and Carrie Mae Weems in the 21st century have defined the very best that the medium is capable of.” Marion’s landscape photographs record images where boundaries between one area and another are clearly seen, setting the differences off in high relief. Her work explore...

Pamela Booker’s latest editorial for Village Q is available here:  Sex Talk & F-Bombs In addition to being a writer, Pamela is also a visual artist and educator. Her interdisciplinary works have been published, exhibited and staged in this country and abroad. Her play SEENS From the Unexpectedness of Love , will be published by Duke University Press in Black/tino: Anthology of Queer Performance (Fall 2015) and her photography was recently seen in the exhibition For Whom it Stands, TOO , at the Star-Spangled Banner Flag Museum in Baltimore. Pamela is completing her first novel, Fierce! Remains , the fictional biography of a legendary drag queen. Currently, she is Writing Faculty in undergraduate programs at Goddard College and NYU, Her blog is  Greens 4 Squares .

Gail Donohue Storey, who was a VCCA Fellow in 1985, reports that her third book,  I Promise Not to Suffer: A Fool for Love Hikes the Pacific Crest Trail  published in 2013 by Mountaineers Books won the National Outdoor Book Award, Foreword IndieFab Book of the Year, Colorado Book Award, Nautilus Silver Award, and Barbara Savage Award. The book’s second printing came out in 2014 with a Readers Guide including an interview between Gail and her editor and Questions and Topics for Group Discussion. The book recounts her “hilariously harrowing story of hiking the Pacific Crest Trail with her husband, Porter, a hospice physician.” The Lord's Motel,  Gail's first book, a novel was hailed by the New York Times Book Review as "a tale of unwise judgments and wise humor." Her second novel,  God's Country Club,  was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection. For more information about Gail and her books:  gailstorey.com

VCCA has learned the sad news that Daniel B. Meltzer has died in hospice in New York City where he lived. Primarily known as a playwright, Dan also worked as a film editor and researcher, actor, comedy writer, play doctor, speechwriter, as a newspaper editor and reporter, and as a senior writer and editor for CBS News. Dan’s plays have been staged in theaters across the U.S. and overseas. He was the author of the popular stage comedies The Square Root of Love, Movie of the Month, Intermission, and A Cable From Gibraltar. Dan also published hundreds of humorous and serious Op Ed essays in newspapers via the Chicago Tribune and Associated Press syndicates. His short stories won both the O. Henry and Pushcart Prizes.  Dan taught at NYU, Penn State, and Marymount Manhattan College. He also lectured and entertained widely on topics ranging from Early Greek Theater to writers block to Albert Einstein’s pursuit of a “Theory of Everything.” Dan was recently honored f...