Throughout the year, we offer themed invitational residencies that address the pressing issues of our time. In December, we had the pleasure of bringing two ...

Indigenous Writers and Activists at Mesa Refuge This summer we were honored to host three cohorts of Indigenous writers and activists at Mesa Refuge. Funded by ...

One more week to meet our goal for this spring campaign! Will you support writers on identity, culture, and family history like our writers-on-the-edge?

Two more weeks to meet our goal! Will you support immigration writers like Saket Soni and Silky Shah?

Three more weeks in our campaign! Will you help us support trans voices like Thomas McBee and Bamby Salcedo?

This week, meet three incredible alums writing about economic equity and housing issues. From the regulatory structures that economically support our most vulnerable citizens, to ...

This week, we are excited to introduce you to two Mesa Refuge alums changing the critical local and national conversations about climate change and resilience: ...

This week we launch our $75,000 spring fundraising campaign by introducing you to two incredible alums who are advocating for change in our criminal legal ...

Thanks to funding from the Indigenous Knowledges Holder Fund (IKHF), a sister fund to Tamalpais Trust, a new cohort model will support Indigenous knowledge holders ...

Susan Kiyo Ito, Mesa Refuge alum and board member, has been named a finalist in the 2023 National Book Critics Circle Awards. The awards, founded ...

This year we welcomed Leading Edge Fellows including Cat Brooks, Malkia Devich Cyril, Shimica Gaskins and Chaney Turner for week-long residencies at the Mesa Refuge. ...

After 25 years of visionary leadership, our founder, Peter Barnes, has stepped down from the board. Peter wrote his first book while living on a ranch ...

We are proud to announce a new fellowship at the Mesa Refuge: the Toby Symington Sacred Advocacy Fellowship! This fellowship supports writers who are advocates ...

Tannenbaum Fellow in Residence this Summer This summer, we welcomed back our third Judith Tannenbaum Teaching Artist Fellow at the Mesa Refuge: Duane Horton. Duane is ...

Our planet, our democracy and our society are all teetering on edges. In such a world, we more than ever need refuges for sanity and ...

Spring Campaign for Writers at the Edge This week, meet Mesa Refuge Alum Lisa Morehouse “The folks at Mesa Refuge took a chance on me. When I ...

Spring Campaign for Writers at the Edge This week, meet Mesa Refuge Alum Alex Park “When I applied to the Mesa Refuge, it had only just occurred ...

Spring Campaign for Writers at the Edge This week, meet Alum Raha Jorjani “As a society, we tout holding people accountable for harming others, but fail to ...

Mesa Refuge writers and activists focus on pivotal issues facing our world—from healthcare, reproductive rights and mental wellness to mass incarceration, homelessness and the global ...

After a long break in day-use rental space for mission-aligned organizations, we have opened the house for these purposes again, starting with the UC Graduate ...

During a time of dramatic storms, our 2023 West Marin Community Fellows–Elia Haworth, Theresa Harlan, and Dewey Livingston–weathered it all as they explored and wrote ...

In response to requests from our alums, we now introduce Alum Weeks, a time to come back to the Mesa Refuge with other alums for ...

We are so pleased to announce a new fellowship at the Mesa Refuge: the Jennifer Egan Creative Approaches to Mental Health Fellowship. A generous donor (who ...

We are hiring a part-time Program Coordinator in the Bay Area to provide support for our residency and DIY retreat programs, social media, events and ...

Thanks to the generous support from so many of you, we closed our spring campaign only a few dollars away from our goal! Each donation is ...

Kamala Tully will step up as our new executive director at the end of June, when Susan Page Tillett retires.

What an amazing and wonderful response for #GivingTuesday yesterday! Thank you from the bottom of our hearts. But there is still time to help: our ...

Dear Mesa Refuge Friends, Our #GivingTuesday goal is $35,000 and we are only $7,000 away from reaching our goal. That is good! But what is better is ...

#GivingTuesday is tomorrow, and two wonderful Mesa Refuge friends have offered to match your gift, up to $35,000!

Warm greetings this Thanksgiving! This is one of our favorite weeks of the year, when we pause to celebrate bounty and give thanks. At the Mesa ...

Marin magazine published an inspiring article about the history and beauty of the Mesa Refuge in its October issue. Mesa Refuge Alum Katy Butler was ...

The Mesa Refuge is seeking a passionate executive director to lead our three-bedroom retreat center that has provided time and space for more than 1000 writers, journalists and ...

Big News! Susan Page Tillett, our first professional executive director, will retire at the end of June, 2022, after eight years at the helm of ...

We have big news to share! This beloved house, 11 Los Reyes Drive, will soon legally become our home. Ever since the house was designed and built ...

The Mesa Refuge is very pleased to announce the formation of the May and Jack Elinson Public Health Fellowship, which honors the legacy of public ...

Marin Magazine Features Sam Francis and Mesa Refuge We were so pleased to provide a photograph of 11 Los Reyes by Sarah Hadley for this article ...

This Week: Meet Tiffany Golden Tiffany Golden is changing the world, one child at a time. As a children’s author and teaching artist, she specializes in ...

This week, meet Mesa Refuge Change Maker Sunita Puri, MD. Sunita Puri deals with life and death on a daily basis, so she has played a ...

Josie is a photographer, writer and oceans activist working between the communities of science and art to bring the scientifically rich, visually stunning, and ecologically ...

In Week 3 of our Change Makers spring campaign, meet Robert Franklin — and join us for a conversation with him this Thursday!

It’s week 2 of our spring campaign. This week, meet Mesa Refuge Alum Ana Cecilia Pérez, the founder and director of the Latinx Racial Equity Project and ...

As our spring Change Makers campaign launches, we introduce you to Mesa Alum Heather McGhee. Her new book, The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs ...

We are so proud to introduce our seven 2021 Mesa Refuge Change Makers. Each of these alums are busy doing incredible things in the world….and ...

As the new year begins, it brings with it some changes to our Board of Trustees. Two long-standing board members, Harriett Barlow and Mark Dowie, ...

In December we received a wonderful surprise from our friends and colleagues at Black Mountain Circle, a non-profit organization founded by Steve Costa and Kate ...

Mesa Refuge Alum Adam Strauss has a message for you about #GivingTuesday. He’s part of our alum-led team who is raising funds for the Mesa Refuge ...

One of the most heartening things to happen during the time of coronavirus lockdown during the spring of 2020 was the formation of a new ...

The Mesa Refuge is pleased to announce a new fellowship to support practicing teaching artists working with youth in Oakland, California: the Judith Tannenbaum Teaching ...

Week 6: Meet Byron Hurt! This is the last week of our Shelter Fund campaign — if you can, please help us meet our immediate ...

This Week: Meet Rebecca Concepcion Apostol. Rebecca is a community organizer focused on building strong, progressive, and politically active communities of color — working with ...

It’s week 4 of our Shelter Fund campaign. The Mesa Refuge is still standing empty, waiting for the time when we can invite residents back ...

Our alums are always on the front lines of nature, economic equity and social justice, changing conversations world wide with their books, articles, and other ...

This week, meet Krista Tippet. Krista is a Peabody Award-winning broadcaster and a New York Times bestselling author. In 2014, President Obama awarded Krista the National ...

Sujatha Baliga was one of our residents in 2018. She is the director of the Restorative Justice Project at Impact Justice, helping communities implement non-punitive alternatives ...

Meet our week 1 Shelter Fund change maker: BJ is a hospice and palliative medicine physician and educator dedicated to moving healthcare towards a human-centered ...

  I take a deep breath and sidestep my fear and begin speaking from the place where beauty and bravery meet–within the chambers of a quivering ...

We warmly welcome Susan Kiyo Ito to the Mesa Refuge Board of Directors! With dozens of publication credits, Susan is an award-winning writer of fiction as ...

We are so pleased to welcome Mesa Refuge alum, author and law professor Lara Bazelon to our Board of Directors. Lara is an associate professor of law ...

We were delighted to learn that 2018 Mesa Refuge Alum Sujatha Baliga was one of 19 MacArthur Fellows for 2019. Sujatha is an attorney whose work ...

Our Legacy Circle is growing. Thank you to our most recent member of the Legacy Circle,  Mesa Refuge Board Member Stan Yogi. You can join ...

Our fall newsletter is out. Read about our recent residents, see photos from our recent event with alum Katy Butler, an alum highlight on recent ...

The Mesa Refuge has met a new milestone: our first student intern. We warmly welcome Claire Wingert to the Mesa Refuge community, and look forward ...

This fall we welcomed an alum and one of our most beloved authors, Katy Butler, back to the Mesa Refuge for a reception and reading. ...

Thanks to all of you, we met, and passed, our fundraising goal: we raised almost $53,000 in six weeks. This generosity allows us to provide ...

This is week six of our campaign: we are almost there and we can’t reach it without you! This week: meet Malcolm Margolin.

Week five of our campaign; just two more weeks to meet our goal. This week, meet Rowen White, author and Seed Keeper from the Mohawk ...

Week four of our campaign, with $18,000 to go. This week: meet Raj Patel, writer and activist.

Week three of our spring fundraiser, and we are half way to our goal! This week: meet Lara Bazelon, author and law professor.

This is week 2 of our six-week spring fundraiser, and we’ve already raised just over $20,000: that’s 40% of our goal! This week: meet Irwin ...

Launching our spring fundraising campaign! This week, meet Rue Mapp.

Welcome to our new board president, San Francisco author Elaine Elinson. Peter Barnes, Mesa Refuge founder and former board president, steps down but will remain ...

Over the past five years, we have worked hard to ensure that the Mesa Refuge will endure in perpetuity. We broadened our financial support, establishing ...

Welcome to Sara Campos, a new member of the Mesa Refuge Board of Directors! Sara is a writer, consultant, and lawyer, who came to the ...

Mesa Alum Susan J. Tweit came to the Mesa Refuge in 2003 to work on her memoir, Walking Nature Home: A Life’s Journey. Her residency came ...

We are very pleased to announce our most recent fellowship, the Register Fellowship for Restorative Justice, funded by Mesa Alum Lara Bazelon.

We now welcome you to design your own DIY writing retreat at the Mesa Refuge. Staying at the house is an experience in immersion into ...

We are thrilled to welcome James Bell to the Mesa Refuge Board of Directors. James is the founder and executive director of the W. Haywood ...

Sue Conley Joins Mesa Refuge Board

For the second year in a row, Mesa Refuge partnered with the Human Rights Center at UC Berkeley School of Law to support three fellows ...

Recent alum Bob Friedman has created the Howard and Phyllis Friedman Fellowship to support writers and other creatives working toward an inclusive economy–becoming the first ...

In December of this year, we will host Refuge for Activists, our first residency dedicated to supporting those who need a place where they can ...

More and more good news from alums who have been publishing and getting their work into the world. This is news sent to us in ...

Three outstanding residents have been named Marion Weber Healing Arts Fellows for this fall. Andrew Boyd is a New York author, humorist and longtime veteran of creative ...

Josh Kun, Mesa Refuge Healing Arts Fellow in 2016, has received a MacArthur Fellowship. Josh is a Professor of communication at the Annenberg School for ...

Lyons Filmer of West Marin radio KWMR interviewed some of our summer 2016 Mesa Refuge Climate Change Fellows during their residency. Listen to the interview ...

Artists Explore Climate Change in Point Reyes National Seashore through Artist-in-Residence Pilot Program The Mesa Refuge teams up with the Point Reyes National Seashore Association for ...

UC Berkeley Law School’s Human Rights Center to send fellows to Mesa Refuge.

A new fellowship dedicated to the separation of Church and State.

The new Jeanette Pontacq Fellowship supports investigative journalism.

More good news from alums! Congratulations! Send us yours.

New 501(c)3 non-profit status, some wonderful foundation support, a large donation, and a new fellowship for health writing.

We received a huge response from alums this summer reporting publications, awards, and other news. Send us your news as well!

Compass(x) Strategy featured the Mesa Refuge in their Non Profit Spotlight in July. Thank you! Nice article.