Prague never lets you go. That dear little mother has claws." - Franz Kafka

Prague never lets you go. That dear little mother has claws." - Franz Kafka

July 6th to 31st, 2024

The Prague Summer Program for Writers is a three-week-long, family-run summer writing residency in Prague, Czech Republic. In addition to having ample time to write in a beautiful and historic city, participants take part in weekly workshops, a private conference, weekly readings, special lectures, literary walking tours and more.

  • The PSP consists of two workshops, one prose (fiction and nonfiction), the other verse and prose.

    We will determine which of the two you will join.

    Workshops will take place 3 days a week (for 3 weeks) and will last 2.5 hours each.

  • Literary Walking Tour

    guided by Miloš Čuřík, Czech dissident

    Lectures on Modern Czech Liteature

    Modern Czech Literature lead by Petr Bílek, Czech literary scholar

    The Reception of American Liteature in Czech Culture lead by Hana Ulmanová, Czech literary scholar

    Symposium on Literary Publishing

    lead by Hana Zahadníková, senior editor at Argo Publishers

    Live and Virtual Literary Readings

    At a small local English-language bookstore and an arthouse cinema, respectively.

    A Trip to the Samizdat Library

    a library chronicling exile and samizdat Czech and Slovak literature during the communist era

    Weekend Excursion

    to Český Krumlov or Terezín

    Opening and Closing Parties

    a time to celebrate what’s ahead and what we’ve accomplished while dining on Czech food

  • During May and June, we will conduct a virtual manuscript conference with each individual accepted into the program. Each PSP participant will have an additional manuscript conference, virtually, during the program with a member of the PSP’s permanent faculty, or with another respected writer/writing pedagogue.

    During the program, Richard Katrovas will hold office hours on Thursdays and Fridays.

  • The PSP has partnered with local community-driven organizations all around the historical center.

    You will get to participate in workshops under decorated wooden ceilings from the renaissance while looking out upon Old Town Square at the Prague Creative Center, attend literary readings in the cellar of the Shakespeare and Son’s bookstore under the Charles’ Bridge, and enjoy lectures in a sunny room in the tranquil Kampa park next to the Vltava river.

  • Student Republic Dormitories

    $387/3-bed dormitory

    At the dormitories, PSP students are housed together in 3-bed rooms in an apartment with a simple kitchen and bathroom. There is a washing machine in the basement. The rooms have old wooden flooring and large French windows. They are located in the center, a 15-minute walk from the workshop venue. Nearby you will find everything you need for a comfortable stay.

    Please note that the apartments may be located in upper floors (there are 7 in total) and that there is no elevator. Please also take into consideration that there are no air conditioners in the apartments.

    Private Accomodation

    Students are free to find their own accomodation through services like Booking.com, Airbnb.com or Flatio.com.

    We recommend the Vinohrady and Albertov neighborhoods. They are close to the center but local and cozy.

  • $2,200

    $1,800 if recommended by any past participant of the program

    $1,500 if recommended by anyone who has taught in the program

    $1,200 if you attended the PSP at any time in the past thirty years, or matriculate at a Michigan institution of higher learning other that Western Michigan University

    $800 if you are a matriculating graduate or undergraduate student of Western Michigan University

    11,000 CZK if you are currently living in Prague

    Recommendations should be in the form of brief e-mails addressed to Richard Katrovas, director, Prague summer Program: katrovas@aol.com.

  • Citizens of many countries, including the United States, Canada, Australia, and, of course, the EU do not need a visa for a short-term stay in the Czech Republic. If you are from a country where Visas are required we recommend you begin the process of obtaining your short-term visa immediately after acceptance to the program. Please don’t hesitate to contact us for help.

Richard Katrovas, Director of the Prague Summer Program

“One may ask why English-language creative writers—poets, fictionists, playwrights, memoirists, essayists—should occupy an ancient city in the heart of Europe for the month of July, a city in a country whose inhabitants speak primarily a beautiful and complex Slavic language that only ten million people on earth can understand.

The answer is the Prague Spring, that period of cultural fecundity preceding the Soviet invasion of August 20, 1968. The Prague Spring was an incredible, though brief, period when the best and brightest of a tiny nation, under the banner of Dubček’s “socialism with a human face,” siphoned the nonviolent, iconoclastic spirit of 60s counterculture to fuel a native movement that eschewed both Soviet and capitalist ideologies and sought to establish a society based upon the intrinsic value of the human spirit. Later, the signatories of Charter 77 embodied that quixotic yet profound goal in the midst of the gray and brutal post-invasion period dubbed “Normalization.”

Creative writing, as an academic rubric, was the product of a radical egalitarianism ushered into academe by that same ethos. The Prague Summer Program for Writers is a celebration of that spirit.

Other reasons why an English-language writer may wish to attend the Prague Summer Program are less lofty, more about individual ambition. Here are three obviously related reasons:

  • Some of the most important writers working in the English language have served, and continue to serve as Prague Summer Program mentors.

  • Scores of books have been published by writers who’ve attended the Prague Summer Program.

  • Hundreds of stories, poems and essays by Prague Summer Program alumni have appeared in the most important journals, magazines and anthologies in the English-speaking world.

This is simply to say that the Prague Summer Program continues to affect, modestly though not insignificantly, both the pedagogy of creative writing dovetailed with culture studies, and English-language literary culture in general.”

Our Lovely People

Testimonials

I grew enormously as a writer at the PSP, honing my craft, working with, listening to, and sharing not just with fellow writers but with some of the very best and generous mentors – Richard Katrovas and Stuart Dybek come to mind immediately. I love the energy and dynamics of this programme. I love Prague. PSP? I’d highly recommend it.

Joshua Doležal, 2022

If Prague is a difficult city to penetrate when traveling alone, the Prague Summer Program provides an ideal avenue for writers who want to soak up the literary culture of the city. The workshops are rigorous but kind, and the inspiration provided through field trips and readings will make a feast for years. I am so grateful for the time I got to spend with my fellow students, the workshop leaders, and the Katrovas crew!

Josh B., 2022

Coming to the Prague Summer Program this year, I vaguely anticipated a kind of transformative experience and nearly ducked the blow by having my post-pandemic travel plans thwarted at one point. But then I made it, and what happened was the reverse of Jean-Marc’s pastoral fantasy in Identity by Milan Kundera: instead of being the poet or the writer among imaginary mute beasts, I saw fragments of what I was doing reflected in the work of the other participants as nude as myself in their attempts to communicate the bare unprocessed core of the unspeakable. This mirroring confusion, the darker female version of the fantasy entertained by Chantal, prevailed throughout workshops and readings until I was called out by my name on the last day and found that I was still me and I still spoke my heart, but in a less jarring and more comprehensible way, because the gap between what I thought I was doing and what I was really doing has flashed and waned.

I do feel the three weeks I spent with the PSP after being granted the Václav Havel demi-fellowship were three solid chapters on my way to a professional writer’s career. Even though I have no doubt I will want to review them and edit, the feeling that they are there is comforting. I thoroughly enjoyed the workshops by Mark and Maya Slouka. There I learnt that the word “workshop” that I have known as a noun is a verb. I feel deeply indebted to Richard Katrovas, who in a couple of face-to-face conferences gave me a year’s worth feedback and has managed to make me angry in the right way. I’d been also tacitly admiring all the effort Ema Katrovas put into making things work on all levels. So, in line with a few simple things I have acquired here in Prague such as a taste for mineral water, renewed appreciation of good public transport and strive for clarity, I want to say thank you.

Jenya Zvonareva, 2021