After St. Paul, Minn.’s Bush Foundation announced Tuesday that Coffee House Press is one of 16 nonprofit arts organizations to receive a $100,000 grant, the Minneapolis publishing house told PW that it is going to put the money to good use and focus on expanding a writer's residency program it launched in 2013.

While CHP intends to set aside some of the money and use another portion to overhaul its website, it’s going to put a healthy sum into expanding its In the Stacks residency program. CHP wants to take the program, now in its third year, beyond its home state of Minnesota.

Through the In the Stacks artist residencies, CHP has been placing writers in libraries of all kinds in the Twin Cities--academic, public, even a coffee shop with a Little Free Library in front of it--for a month. In return for stipends of varying amounts, the artists are expected during the residency to conduct a writer’s workshop, speak at four community events, and participate in select library promotions.

The program's first recipient, writer and dancer Lightsey Darst, spent her residency at Minneapolis' Walker Art Center's resource library in May 2013. The current artist in residence, memoirist Kao Kalia Yang, is at St. Paul's Sun Ray Library. Including Yang, CHP has coordinated residencies for 14 artists.

“We have always intended to make the residency program national, but wanted to start local first,” Fischbach explained. In the fall, CHP even began sponsoring national residencies: author Valeria Luiselli was in residence at Poet's House in New York City in October, while psychotherapist and writer Nor Hall just completed her residency at Opus Archives in Santa Barbara, Calif.

The first two years of CHP’s In the Stacks program were partially paid for by a grant from the McKnight Foundation in Minneapolis. A member of the CHP board member covered the remaining cost of the program. The Bush Foundation funds will help to maintain the program “for a little while,” Fischbach said. Nonetheless, he added, CHP intends to continue seeking other funding, as In the Stacks grows.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the stipend artists receive during their In the Stacks residencies. There is no fixed amount; the stipend provided varies from recipient to recipient.