Dates and Location
The 2027 Creative Incubator will be held virtually on February 13 and February 19-22, 2027.
Application Details
Applications to attend the 2027 Creative Incubator are open from Thursday June 4-Thursday, July 8, 2026 at 11:59 pm ET.
You may apply to more than one workshop, however, each application must be submitted separately and requires an additional fee. The fee for each application is $25.00 and is processed through Submittable's online portal. If you wish to pay by cash or check please contact retreat@lambdaliterary.org.
[A limited number of application fee waivers are available for QTBIPOC** members of our community who would be attending a Lambda Literary Retreat (including the Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices) for the first time.
To inquire about a fee waiver, email retreat@lambdaliterary.org confirming your eligibility as:
- A member of the QTBIPOC community
- Someone who has never attended the Retreat before.
You do not need to provide any other identifying information. Waivers are given out on a first-come-first serve basis. Secure yours sooner rather than later!]
To Apply, Please Prepare
1. An artistic/biographical statement (max 500 words).
2. a writing sample matching the genre of the workshop you’re applying for:
- Must be previously unpublished
- As the Creative Incubator is a generative writing space, the sample you apply with will not be workshopped during the Incubator. Rather, the writing sample you submit is meant to give us an idea of who you are as a writer and what your work will bring to the community
- Must be in .DOC, .DOCX, or .PDF format.
- For prose, please double space and use a 12 point font.
- For Screenwriting, please use standardized scriptwriting format.
Page limits per workshop:
- For Fiction and Nonfiction: 15 pages maximum. This maximum applies to cross-genre samples as well as samples in verse.
- For Performance Writing: 15 pages maximum from a full-length work, short play/script, or piece of theatre/film. This page limit includes dramatis personae/cast list/setting/description.
- For Poetry: 8 pages maximum
3. Optional, not required for acceptance:
- Any publications of your work during the past two years, including anthologies, literary journals, magazines, websites, and books.
- Any other writing conferences, retreats, and workshops have you attended.
Tuition, Scholarships, and Financial Support
Creative Incubator tuition is $725 and is offered on a sliding-scale honor system model.
Lambda Literary is committed to providing financial support to those who need it. We are working hard to make our spaces as accessible as possible, and those who cannot pay their own way should not have to expend more time and energy just to attend. With this new plan, Lambda Literary will be offering a sliding-scale tuition model to make sure every accepted writer can attend, regardless of financial status.
More information on sliding scale practices and available tuition tiers can be found in the application.
Application Review and Status Notifications
Applications are reviewed in three stages by a panel of Lambda's Writers Retreat Fellows and our staff. Reviewers are given comprehensive guidelines and a rubric to evaluate each application for craft, inventiveness, voice, and form. Within that, we strive to serve a variety of writers with varying backgrounds, ages, sexual orientations, genders, religions, races, ethnicities, socioeconomic statuses, and localities.
After an application is reviewed multiple times, the top candidates are passed on to the genre-specific faculty member who chooses 10 fellows. Faculty make the final determinations regarding accepted and waitlisted applicants. All applicants will be notified of their application status in October 2027.
Refund Policy
The $25 application fee is nonrefundable.
Questions?
Reach out to retreat@lambdaliterary.org if any queries are left unanswered.
Find out all details about the 2027 Creative Incubator including faculty profiles and a sample schedule on our website.
*Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer or Questioning, and all emerging identities
**Queer and Trans folks who are Black, Indigenous, and Persons of Color