Flying Fox Farm is located in Jacksonville, North Carolina, home to Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune — a place where military life quietly shapes the rhythm of the entire community. Nearly everyone here is connected in some way through service, family, transition, deployment, return, loss, rebuilding, or constant movement.

Press Pause believes there are countless stories, songs, artworks, and perspectives living inside communities like ours that often go unsupported or unheard within traditional arts spaces. The Cherry Tree Fellowship exists to make a little room for that work.

We are less interested in prestige than we are in honesty. We care about work that is alive, searching, unresolved, human. We know creative lives are often built in the middle of jobs, caregiving, uncertainty, grief, transition, burnout, reinvention, or exhaustion. This fellowship is meant to offer one person a pause — time to think, make, breathe, and reconnect with their creative practice within a quiet rural environment close to anything a working artist may need, including the beach.

Applicants will be welcome to work in any discipline, including fiction, poetry, nonfiction, music, visual art, hybrid work, or forms that don’t fit neatly into categories. Emerging and established creators alike will be encouraged to apply.

The peaceful fellowship apartment comes with its own bathroom and kitchen and overlooks what we call “the park” (where our young cherry trees are growin’).

Press Pause is working to launch the fellowship in Spring 2027, though the exact timeline will depend on organizational capacity, fundraising, and community interest as the program develops.