Tin Can Residency — Paul J. Pastor

The Tin Can Residency

The Residency

The Tin Can Residency is a grassroots by-invitation experience meant to encourage writers and artists with restorative retreat and creative community at Wakerobin House, the Oregon home of Paul Pastor and Emily Pastor.

The name comes from a restored 19-foot 1962 Yellowstone travel trailer, whose vintage “tin can” character is both a step back in time and a simple, inspiring setting for meaningful creative work. Yellowstone trailers were built in the town of Wakarusa, in Elkhart County, Indiana, and were the trailer of choice for traveling carnival employees because of their style and quality.

The vision of this residency is to care for a writer or artist with focused time, good food, deep conversation, and restorative adventure in Oregon’s beautiful and wild Columbia River Gorge. The creative vocation is demanding, and deserves occasional waypoints for simplicity, focus, and renewal. Residents will be encouraged to balance a commitment to work with a commitment to rest and to attend to the wellbeing of their soul.

Support our 2024 Resident and the Tin Can

The 2024 Tin Can Resident

We are pleased to share that the recipient of the inaugural (2024) Tin Can Residency is Virginia-based poet and writer Carla Galdo. Carla will join Paul and Emily for an April retreat for focused creative time to work on her poetry.

Carla Galdo is a writer and editor for the women’s book group Well-Read Mom. She has written for a variety of publications including Humanum: Issues in Family, Culture, and Science, Columbia Magazine, and Front Porch Republic. Her poetry has appeared in Dappled Things, Modern Age, Solum Literary Journal, The Windhover, and on Irish Southeast Radio, and she was a finalist in the Catholic Literary Arts 2022 Advent Poetry Contest.

Carla has been featured as a conference speaker and podcast host for Well-Read Mom, and as a guest on the podcasts Bright Wings and Catholic Culture. She has taught various classes in literature, theology, and book reviewing, and leads a Catholic Literary Arts poetry critique group for adult writers.

Carla earned an MTS from the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family, and is pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of St. Thomas-Houston. She and her husband homeschool their six children on a small hobby farm in rural Virginia.

Questions?

How can I apply (or recommend someone) for a future Tin Can Residency?

As this is at our home and an extension of our family’s personal generosity and belief in the arts, the Residency is by invitation only. You can however write to us using the Contact form expressing your interest in future Tin Can experiences (you may be added to an email list in this case), or recommending someone who would specially benefit from such an experience. Be sure to put “Tin Can Residency” in the subject. Please understand that we do get a lot of email, and can’t always guarantee a personal response. Thank you for your interest!

“Tin Can” sounds kind of awful?

Nope! It’s cozy, with a full size bed, small bathroom and sink, comfy seat, a writing table, and a very serviceable kitchen. Think of it as “glamping,” then please forget that word, for it is an awful word.

What will Residents do?

Make things and rest! The Tin Can is intended to be a home base for working on a focused creative project for about five days (30-40 hours of focused work). Open structure during the day will end with shared time by a fire in the evening in which the day’s work can be discussed and the resident can experience creative friendship with a working writer (Paul) and a working visual artist (Emily). A program for the week will be set with each participant that may include one or two outings to points of local interest in support of a generative and rich background to their work. The goal is to encourage a spirit of productive retreat whose benefits last long after the resident leaves the Tin Can.

Will this happen every year?

Maybe! We hope to make it a tradition. Some years there may be two Residencies. Some years there may be none. This is the way of things.

I love the spirit of the Tin Can. What can I do to … encourage more stuff like this?

We believe in doing all we can with what we have—whether little or much. You are welcome to donate in support of this project to partner with us. But we’d also love for you to consider what you can do, even if very little, to encourage and support artists and writers in your orbit. Besides the purchasing of good original art and new books, and subscribing to journals which publish quality new work, a mindset of generosity is incredibly encouraging and validating for writers and artists, particularly early in their career.

Go do cool things! Revel in beauty! Plant trees! Frolic! Inculcate countercultural joy against the dark powers of the world and the forces of monetized dehumanization! No one can stop you!