The idea of a residency center in Utah

similar to Yaddo or the MacDowell Colony I find exciting and exhilarating… truly an Eden for creativity. Such a resource will not only transform Utah into a preeminent nucleus for the arts of the West but also quite probably of the entire country.

-Chaim Potok

An institution of the Yaddo kind

is as necessary to a region as a good cultural museum. A museum gathers and preserves the artifacts of an existing tradition… I do hope that you will be successful in raising the funds necessary to put the Springdale site into operation and give a great boost to Utah’s literature.

-Wallace Stegner

This is to praise the MESA project

The idea of setting up a residential center for writers in the interior West, modeled on the long-time successes of Yaddo and the McDowell Colony, is brilliant, obviously useful, and long overdue.

-William Kittredge

With unrestrained enthusiasm I endorse The Mesa

in Springdale, Utah. My association with such centers has been beneficial--in fact life-altering. Always my time has been fruitful and my life enriched by the amazing experience of living among others of the same urgencies and dearth of time, and willingness to work.

- Emma Lou Thayne - Writer, Poet, Lecturer