memoir writing fellowship

44 Fellowships for Creative Writers in Any Career Stage

If you’re a writer looking for a unique opportunity to grow as an artist, this large list of Fellowships for Creative Writers has something for you! It includes opportunities all over the world – including the Scandinavian countries, Germany, India, France, and Italy, as well as fellowships that let you design your own international travel itinerary. Each fellowship offers a funded opportunity to fledgling, mid-career, or established writers. If one sounds exciting to you, make sure to bookmark it to your ProFellow account!

Another way to grow your career as a writer is to go to graduate school, and you can discover over 500 programs that fund their graduate students by downloading  ProFellow’s FREE Directory of Fully Funded Graduate Programs and Full Funding Awards.

American Academy in Berlin Prize

The Academy welcomes applications from emerging and established scholars, writers, and professionals who wish to engage in independent study in Berlin. Approximately 24 Berlin Prizes have been conferred annually. Past recipients have included historians, economists, poets and novelists, journalists, legal scholars, anthropologists, musicologists, and public policy experts, among others. Fellowships are typically awarded for an academic semester or, on occasion, for an entire academic year. Bosch Fellowships in Public Policy may be awarded for shorter stays of 6-8 weeks. Benefits include round-trip airfare, partial board, a $5,000 monthly stipend, and accommodations at the Academy’s lakeside Hans Arnhold Center in the Berlin-Wannsee district. Fellowships are restricted to individuals based permanently in the U.S.

American Institute of Indian Studies Senior Performing and Creative Arts Fellowships

AIIS Senior Performing and Creative Arts Fellowships are available to accomplished practitioners of the performing arts of India and creative artists who demonstrate that studying in India would enhance their skills, develop their capabilities to teach or perform in the U.S., enhance American involvement with India’s artistic traditions or strengthen their links with peers in India. Awards will normally be for periods of up to four months, although proposals for periods of up to nine months can be considered.

American Library in Paris Visiting Fellowship

The Visiting Fellowship offers writers and researchers an opportunity to pursue a creative project in Paris for a month or longer while participating actively in the life of the American Library. Fellowship applicants should be working on a book project, fiction or nonfiction, or a feature-length documentary film. The fellowship includes a stipend of $5,000 to cover travel, accommodation, and other expenses. The Library offers networking opportunities and the fellowship is open to English speakers of any nationality.

Artist Trust Fellowship

Artist Trust Fellowships are designed to recognize artistic achievement, dedication to an artistic discipline, and potential for further professional development. 8 grants at $10,000 each will be awarded in Music, Media, Literary, and Craft disciplines are awarded in even-numbered years, and Emerging Fields & Cross-Disciplinary, Performing Visual, and Traditional & Folk Arts in odd-numbered years. Applicants must be practicing artists, age 18 or older by the application deadline date, a generative artist, and a resident of Washington State at the time of application and when the award is granted.

Bard Fiction Prize

The Bard Fiction Prize was created to inspire and assist fledgling fiction writers to strive for their artistic goals and offer a vibrant, creative atmosphere in an academic setting. Each year one fellowship is awarded to a promising, emerging American writer. In addition to a $30,000 stipend, the winning Fellow receives an appointment as writer in residence at Bard College for one semester, without the expectation that he or she teach traditional courses. Fellows must give at least one public lecture during their fellowship. Candidates must be US citizens with a published book or novel.

Beckmann Emerging Artist Fellowship Program

The Beckmann Emerging Artist Fellowship Program awards fellowships each year to qualified and talented artists in music, dance, theatre, literature, media, and/or the visual arts. Artists will receive a monetary award of $3,500 to purchase supplies and cover other costs as they develop their projects. Professional development and growth opportunities will also be provided throughout the 1-year fellowship. The fellowship program seeks to introduce and provide experiences, connections, and relationships with professional arts institutions and professional artists in central Indiana. Artists must have 1-3 years of experience in their field.

Biography Fellowship

Boehm media fellowship.

The Boehm Media Fellowships provide journalists, storytellers, authors, bloggers, writers, editors, filmmakers, and other media experts at the helm of social innovation with a major focus on poverty alleviation the opportunity to participate as Delegates to the Opportunity Collaboration. This fellowship aims to grow networking opportunities for fellows, enrich knowledge and skills, encourage innovation, and create social impact through media. The fellowship includes a 5-night stay in Ixtapa, Mexico, a $3,200 tuition scholarship, and all meals; financial need is the primary consideration for the fellowship.

Camargo Core Program

The Camargo Foundation, located in Cassis, France, is a residential center offering programs in the Arts and Humanities. It offers time and space in a contemplative environment to think, create, and connect. Applications from all countries, nationalities, and career levels are welcome. Scholars & Thinkers (including professionals and practitioners in creative fields such as curators, critics, urban planners, independent scholars, etc.) should be connected to the Arts and Humanities working on French and Francophone cultures, including but not limited to cross-cultural studies that engage the cultures and influences of the Mediterranean region. Artists, in all disciplines, are the primary creators of a new work/project. Roundtrip transportation and a stipend of 1,000 USD per month are available.

Charles Wallace India Trust Writer Fellowships

CWIT enables Indians in the early to mid stages of their careers to spend time in the UK, helping them to achieve artistic, academic, and professional ambitions and to broaden their international contacts. There are ten fellowships to enable academics, writers, and translators to spend 2-3 months at specified host universities, devoting themselves to their own work and interacting with colleagues. Applicants should be Indian citizens living in India, aged between 25 and 45 (there is no upper age limit for translator fellowships), and have completed postgraduate studies and/or have at least 5 years of professional or academic experience. Please consult university websites for application deadlines.

Children’s Writers-in-Residence Program

The Associates of the Boston Public Library sponsors a Children’s Writer-in-Residence program annually. The program is intended to provide an emerging children’s writer with the financial support and office space needed to complete one literary work for children or young adults. The Children’s Writer-in-Residence receives a $20,000 stipend and office space at the BPL’s Central Library in Copley Square. He or she must work a minimum of 19 hours per week at the BPL during the nine-month residency (September – May). Projects eligible for this program are fiction, non-fiction, a script, or poetry, intended for children or young adults.

Creative Capital Awards

Creative Capital is the only national grantmaking organization with an open application process that supports individual artists across all disciplines. Creative Capital makes a multi-year commitment to its grantees, providing them with tailored financial and advisory support to enable their project’s success while building their capacity to sustain their careers. Our grants are valued at up to $90,000. For each project, we offer up to $50,000 in award monies (direct funding) and an additional suite of career development services valued at $40,000. Applicants must be over 25 and have at least 5 years of work experience.

Creative Community Fellow

The Creative Community Fellows program is for leaders working at the intersection of culture and community. All Fellows enter the program with an idea for a cultural project that responds to a problem they want to solve in their communities. The program consists of a 6-month online course starting with a 1-week residence in a breathtaking, farmhouse-style estate in Vermont. Eligible applicants are cultural entrepreneurs igniting change through arts and culture in their community. Tuition, including room and board, is completely underwritten for all Fellows. Fellows are only responsible for their travel costs to any in-person events.

Define American Immigrant Creative Fellowship

Emerging writer fellowships, fulbright/national geographic digital storytelling fellowship.

The Fulbright/National Geographic Digital Storytelling Fellowship is a new component of the Fulbright U.S. Student Program that provides opportunities for U.S. citizens to participate in an academic year of overseas travel and digital storytelling in up to three countries on a globally significant social or environmental topic. In addition to receiving Fulbright benefits (for travel, stipend, health, etc.), Fellows will receive instruction in digital storytelling techniques and will be paired with one or more National Geographic editors. Applicants may submit proposals for grants to 1-3 foreign countries.

George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation Fellowships

Howard fellowships support early mid-career artists and scholars to pursue proposed projects of their choosing. Support is particularly intended to augment paid sabbatical leaves. In the case of independent artists or scholars, or those without paid leaves, the Howard Fellowship would enable them to devote a substantial block of time to the proposed project. Fellowships are for $35,000 and are open to any applicant who can legally live and work in the U.S. The 2020 fellowships support projects in the fields of Fiction, Poetry, Playwriting, and also Theatre Studies.

Hedgebrook Writers in Residence

The Writers in Residence Program is Hedgebrook’s core program, supporting the fully-funded residencies of approximately 80 writers at the retreat each year. Hedgebrook is on Whidbey Island, about thirty-five miles northwest of Seattle. Situated on 48 acres of forest and meadow facing Puget Sound, with a view of Mount Rainier, the retreat hosts writers from all over the world for residencies of two to four weeks, at no cost to the writer. This residency is open to women writers in all genres! Four writers reside at a time, each housed in a handcrafted cottage.

Hodder Fellowship

The Hodder Fellowship will be given to writers and non-literary artists of exceptional promise to pursue independent projects at Princeton University during the academic year. Potential Hodder Fellows are writers, composers, choreographers, visual artists, performance artists, or other kinds of artists or humanists who have “much more than ordinary intellectual and literary gifts”; they are selected more “for promise than for performance.” Given the strength of the applicant pool, most successful Fellows have published a first book or have similar achievements in their own field. Provides a stipend of $88K. Open to all citizenships.

Hodson Trust-John Carter Brown Fellowship

The Hodson-Brown Fellowship supports work by academics, independent scholars, and writers working on significant projects relating to the literature, history, culture, or art of the Americas before 1830. Candidates with a U.S. history topic are strongly encouraged to concentrate on the period prior to 1801. The fellowship is also open to filmmakers, novelists, creative and performing artists, and others working on projects that draw on this period of history. The fellowship award supports two months of research and two months of writing. The stipend is $5,000 per month for a total of $20,000, plus housing and university privileges.

Inevitable Foundation Accelerate Fellowship

The Accelerate Fellowship is a year-long program that gives mid-level disabled screenwriters $40,000 in funding, bespoke mentorship, industry connections, and the community they need to become industry-leading creators. Ongoing writing workshops and check-ins with the Inevitable team allow Fellows to sharpen their writing and pitching skills. The Accelerate Fellowship is a 12-month program, focused half on writing skills and half on business skills. The Fellowship is for individuals that self-identify as disabled, currently pursuing a career in screenwriting.

LIFT–Early Career Support for Native Artists

The LIFT–Early Career Support for Native Artists program provides one-year awards for early-career Native artists to develop and realize new projects. Fellows’ work should aim to uplift communities and advance positive social change. Eligible applicants must be individual Native artists working in dance/choreography, fiction/poetry writing, film/video, multi-disciplinary arts, music, performance art, theater and screenplay writing, traditional arts, or 2D/3D visual arts. LIFT awards up to $10,000 for a proposed project with $2,500 earmarked for the artist’s benefit and well-being. Up to 20 artists will be selected to receive LIFT awards.

Logan Nonfiction Fellowship

Fellowships of 5-10 weeks for nonfiction reporters and writers working on important social, political, health, environmental, human rights, and justice topics. Logan Nonfiction fellows at the Carey Institute are provided with all the necessary tools to complete their critical work. Lodging, workspace, sophisticated technological support (including Wi-Fi, a state-of-the-art screening room and dedicated space, equipment, and software for video, film, and radio editing), and meals are provided. Professional journalists and writers of all nationalities are invited to apply but knowledge of the English language is required.

Just Buffalo Literary Center Poetry Fellowship

John simon guggenheim memorial foundation fellowships.

Often characterized as “mid-career” awards, Guggenheim Fellowships are intended for men and women who have already demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or creative ability in the arts. Guggenheim Fellowships are granted to selected individuals for 6-12 months. No special conditions attach to them, and Fellows may spend their grant funds in any manner they deem necessary to their work. Open to citizens and permanent residents of the United States and Canada.

Kresge Artist Fellowship

Kresge Arts in Detroit provides significant financial support for Kresge Artist Fellowships annually, each consisting of a $25,000 award and professional practice opportunities for emerging and established metropolitan Detroit artists in the dance/music, film/theatre, literary arts, and visual arts. The Kresge Artist Fellowships are given to artists whose commitment to artistic achievement, in contemporary or traditional forms, is evident in the quality of their work. Fellowship applications are accepted by artists who are currently legal residents of the metropolitan Detroit tri-county area (Macomb, Oakland, or Wayne counties) in Michigan.

MacColl Johnson Fellowships

The Robert and Margaret MacColl Johnson Fellowship Fund provides up to three $25,000 artist fellowships each year, rotating among composers, writers, and visual artists on a three-year cycle. In all three disciplines, the fellowships will be awarded to emerging and mid-career Rhode Island artists whose work demonstrates creativity, rigorous dedication and consistent artistic practice, and significant artistic merit. The financial support provided by the fellowships enables artists to concentrate time on the creative process, focus on personal and professional development, expand their body of work, and explore new directions.

MacDowell Colony Fellowship

The MacDowell Colony is the nation’s leading artist colony located in Peterborough, New Hampshire. Each year about 300 Fellowships, or residencies, are awarded to artists in seven disciplines: architecture, film/video arts, interdisciplinary arts, literature, music composition, theatre, and visual arts. A Fellowship consists of exclusive use of a private studio, accommodations, and three prepared meals a day for two weeks to two months. MacDowell encourages applications from emerging and established artists representing the widest possible range of perspectives and demographics. Enrolled students are ineligible.

Maine Artist Fellowship

Maine Artist Fellowships are awarded annually to recognize artistic excellence and advance the careers of Maine artists. Fellowships are merit-based awards that are informed by the applicant’s work as documented through materials included in the application. Artists in literary, performing, traditional and visual arts, as well as film and crafts, are invited to apply. Applicants must currently reside in Maine and be 25 years of age or over at the time of the application deadline. The award is for $5,000 and can be used at the artist’s discretion to cover living expenses or project costs.

Matthew Power Literary Reporting Award

A grant of $12,500 will be awarded to support the work of a promising early-career nonfiction writer on a story that uncovers truths about the human condition. Offered for the first time in 2015, the Award has been endowed by individuals and organizations touched by the life and work of Matthew Power, a wide-roving and award-winning journalist who sought to live and share the experience of the individuals and places on which he was reporting. Winners will have access to New York University’s libraries and the Institute’s facilities, including workspace (as available).

NEA Literature Fellowships: Creative Writing

The NEA Literature Fellowships program offers $25,000 grants in prose (fiction and creative nonfiction) and poetry to published creative writers that enable recipients to set aside time for writing, research, travel, and general career advancement. The program operates on a two-year cycle with fellowships in prose and poetry available in alternating years. Only citizens or permanent residents of the United States are eligible to apply. Candidates must meet the fellowship’s publication requirements.

New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Fellowship

Artists’ Fellowships are $8,000 cash awards made to individual originating artists living and working in the state of New York for unrestricted use. Grants are awarded in 15 artistic disciplines, with applications accepted in five categories each year. To be eligible for an NYFA Fellowship, applicants must be a resident of New York State for at least two years prior to the application deadline and cannot be enrolled in a degree program of any kind.

PEN America Emerging Voices Fellowship

The Emerging Voices Fellowship provides a virtual 5-month immersive mentorship program for early-career writers from communities that are traditionally underrepresented in the publishing world. The program is committed to cultivating the careers of Black writers and serves writers who identify as Indigenous, persons of color, LGBTQ+, immigrants, writers with disabilities, and those living outside of urban centers. Applicants do not need to be U.S. permanent residents and/or citizens but must be residing in the United States at the time of applying for, and during the duration of, the fellowship. Applicants cannot be a recipient of an advanced degree in fiction, creative nonfiction, or poetry.   You can find information here .

Princeton Arts Fellowships

Princeton Arts Fellowships will be awarded to artists whose achievements have been recognized as demonstrating extraordinary promise in any area of artistic practice and teaching. Applicants should be early-career poets, novelists, choreographers, playwrights, designers, performers, directors, filmmakers, composers, and performance artists. Princeton Arts Fellows spend two consecutive academic years (September 1-July 1) at Princeton University and formal teaching is expected. An $88,000-a-year stipend is provided. One need not be a U.S. citizen to apply.

Project Involve Fellowship

Each year, 30 filmmakers from diverse backgrounds work in Los Angeles for nine months to hone skills, form creative partnerships, create short films and gain industry access needed to succeed as working artists through the Project Involve Fellowship. Fellows develop and produced six original short films, from pitch through premiere. Film Independent provides script consultation, mentorship, equipment, and casting and post-production services. In addition to a cash production grant, filmmakers are provided with resources for raising additional funds. Writers, directors, producers, cinematographers, editors, animators, executives, programmers, and critics from underrepresented communities are invited to apply.

Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowships

Five Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships in the amount of $27,000 each will be awarded to young poets in the U.S. through a national competition sponsored by the Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. Established in 1989 by the Indianapolis philanthropist Ruth Lilly, the fellowships are intended to encourage the further study and writing of poetry. Applicants must be U.S. citizens between 21 – 31 years of age at the time of application.

Sesame Street Writers’ Room

Sesame Street Writers’ Room is a brand new fellowship opportunity from the creators of Sesame Street seeking fresh new writing talent from underrepresented racial backgrounds. In the intensive six-week program to be held at Sesame Workshop’s New York City office, participants will meet weekly with industry writers, producers, agents, and executives, and are expected to complete at least one script.  The two participants whose scripts show the most promise will be offered creative development deals and mentored by Sesame Workshop executives. “Sesame Street Writers’ Room” is open to writers 21 and older.

Steinbeck Fellows Program

The Steinbeck Fellowship Program is a one-year fellowship for emerging writers of any age and background to pursue a significant writing project while in residence at SJSU. The fellowship provides a stipend of $15,000, the opportunity to interact with other writers, faculty, and graduate students, and share work in progress by giving a public reading once each semester during the fellowship. Residency in the San José, CA area is required. The fellowship is for creative writers, including fiction, drama, creative nonfiction, and biography. Applications in poetry will not be accepted.

Wallace Stegner Fellowship

The Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University provides 10 two-year professional fellowships annually: 5 fellowships in fiction writing and 5 fellowships in poetry writing. Fellows meet weekly in a 3-hour class with teachers, but do not need to meet any curricular demands except for attending workshops. The Fellowship does not offer a degree. Candidates must demonstrate the quality of their creative work, their willingness to develop their skills, and their capacity to expand their expertise. Fellowships include a $50,000 living stipend annually and Stanford University pays educational costs and medical health insurance.

Winston Churchill McNeish Writer’s Fellowships (NZ)

The Winston Churchill McNeish Writer’s Fellowship is offered every two years to New Zealand writers. The fellowships are awarded to young and/or emerging writers to travel overseas to experience immersion in other cultures. Projects may or may not have a research component to them. Ideal applicants are emerging writers or journalists aged between 25 and 40 years old who have a track record of publications and propose to travel to non-English speaking, developing countries. New Zealanders, either citizens or people normally resident in New Zealand, may apply.

Woodberry Poetry Room Creative Fellowship

Each year, the Creative Fellowship program at the Woodberry Poetry Room invites poets, writers, translators, artists, filmmakers, composers, and scholars of contemporary poetry to propose creative projects that would benefit from the resources available in the Woodberry Poetry Room. The Creative Fellow receives a stipend of $5,000, access to a range of Harvard Library special collections (including the Poetry Room), and in-depth research support from the WPR curatorial staff. The Creative Fellowship is open to US-based and international applicants. Applications to conduct a collaborative project with one or more artists are permitted.

Writeability Fellowship Program

The Writeability Fellowship support emerging writers with disability with tailored professional development support such as manuscript assessments, curated programs of workshops, and/or mentoring. Writeability aims to remove some of the barriers that have traditionally prevented people with disability from connecting with writing and publishing. It provides tools and information to support people with disability who want to tell their own stories in their own way. Writeability is for anyone who experiences barriers as a result of their particular impairment or condition.

Writing as Activism Fellowship

The Writing as Activism Fellowship reimagines the role of writers in NYC, offering tools and support to produce literary work that centers activism on community and social justice issues. The fellowship will offer a six-month immersive workshop experience for six New York City-based writer-activists committed to uplifting the voices of those most marginalized in the city through writing. The program will culminate with individual and collective work brought to the public and the launch of a cohort of writers ready to mobilize their creativity in activist spaces. Fellows are awarded an honorarium.

Writing for Justice Fellowship

PEN America’s Writing for Justice Fellowship will commission six writers—emerging or established—to create written works of lasting merit that illuminate critical issues related to mass incarceration and catalyze public debate. Proposed projects may include—but are not limited to—fictional stories; works of literary or long-form journalism; theatrical, television, or film scripts; memoirs; poetry collections; or multimedia projects. Fellows will receive an honorarium of between $5,000-$8,000, based on the scope of the project.

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Fellowships

Fellowships opportunities for writers.

The Writer’s Center has developed a list of writing fellowships for your reference.

Please note that this page is a reference for writers. We do not partner with the following organizations. Also, these opportunities are subject to change, so be sure to visit the websites for more information.

The Writer’s Center Compass Fellowship

What it is: Our renewed fellowship program will introduce a new writer each year to our writing family, to help guide them along the next steps on their path, with $1000 in credits toward any TWC workshops within a two-year period, a $300 cash stipend, and more.

Who’s it for: Applicants must be local in the DMV area and be able to travel to Bethesda.

The Writer’s Center says: If you’re a writer or an aspiring writer looking for where to go next, The Writer’s Center Compass Fellowship is a great place to start!

National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships

What it is: The National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships offer $25,000 grants in fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry to enable creative writers to set aside time for writing, research, travel, and general career advancement.

Who’s it for: To be eligible, you have to be a citizen of the United States, you can’t have received two or more fellowships from the National Endowment from the Arts, you can’t have received the creative writing fellowship on or after January 1, 2014, and you must have published a book within the last seven years.

The Writer’s Center says : This is the nationally recognized fellowship that writers are vying for every year. Note that the genres alternate each year, with prose fellowships offered in odd years, and poetry fellowships in even years.

Mother Jones’s Ben Bagdikian Fellowship

What it is: Mother Jones offers an annual fellowship program that is “a crash course in investigative journalism.” The Ben Bagdikian Fellowship is a full-time position lasting approximately one year, beginning on the first Monday in December and running through late November. Fellows receive a $3,250 monthly stipend.

Who’s it for: Those who are still in school or are only available part-time are not eligible, nor can fellowships be used for course credit. Because the first two weeks of the fellowship consist of intensive group trainings, all applicants, without exception, must be prepared to start on the first Monday in December. Mother Jones is not able to furnish work visas for applicants from outside the United States.

The Writer’s Center says : This is a demanding position that will enable participants to get significant experience in investigative journalism.

Provincetown Fine Arts Center Fellowship

What it is: The Provincetown Fine Arts Center offers 20 seven-month residencies each year to emerging visual artists, fiction writers, and poets, each of whom receive an apartment, a studio (for visual artists), and a monthly stipend of $1,000 plus an exist stipend. Residencies run from October 1 through April 30.

Who’s it for: Visual artists, fiction writers, and poets.

The Writer’s Center says : This is one of the only non-MFA programs that support writers and artists for more than a month at a time.

The Kenyon Review Fellowship

What it is: The Kenyon Review offers a two-year fellowship that comes with a $35,000+ stipend and health benefits that will enable the fellow to undertake a significant writing project; teach one class per semester in the English department of Kenyon College; assist with creative and editorial projects for the Kenyon Review ; and participate in the cultural life of Kenyon College.

Who’s it for: Applicants must possess an MFA or PhD in creative writing, English literature, or comparative literature. They must have experience teaching creative writing and/or literature at the undergraduate level.

The Writer’s Center says : This is a fantastic opportunity for early-career writers to receive time and space to write, as well as teaching experience.

The Loft’s McKnight Artist Fellowship

What it is: The Loft presents five $25,000 awards annually to accomplished Minnesota writers and spoken word artists. Four awards alternate annually between creative prose (fiction and creative nonfiction) and poetry/spoken word. The fifth award is presented in children’s literature and alternates annually for writing for ages eight and under and writing for children older than eight.

Who’s it for: Applicants must have been legal residents of Minnesota for the 12 months prior to the application deadline and must currently reside in Minnesota.

The Writer’s Center says : This is a generous grant that will enable Minnesota writers to produce more creative work.

Bucknell Stadler Fellowship

What it is: Bucknell University offers a 10-month fellowship that provides a stipend of at least $33,000 and health insurance. The program offers two distinct tracks: one a fellowship in literary editing and a fellowship in literary arts administration . Applicants can apply to one or the other. Both fellowships are designed to balance the development of professional skills with time to complete a first book of poems. Fellows serve for 20 hours each week during the academic year. The balance of the fellows’ time is reserved for writing.

Who’s it for: Poets who have recently received an MFA or MA in poetry.

The Writer’s Center says : If you are an early career poet and you aren’t interested in teaching, this is a noteworthy opportunity to get significant experience with literary arts administration or literary editing while receiving time and space to work on a poetry collection.

Nieman Fellowships

What it is: Each year, the Nieman Foundation awards paid fellowships of $75,000 to up to 24 journalists working in print, broadcast, digital, and audiovisual media. Those selected for the program spend two full semesters at Harvard auditing classes; they are also able to audit classes at other local universities including MIT and Tufts. The Nieman Foundation also provides some financial support for health insurance and childcare. Fellows are not eligible for health care insurance through Harvard University.

Who’s it for: All applicants for Nieman Fellowships must be working journalists with at least five years of full-time media experience. During the two years prior to applying, an applicant should not have participated in a fellowship lasting four months or longer.

The Writer’s Center says : This is a generous fellowship that enables journalists to deepen their knowledge in an area of interest or several areas of interest.

James Jones Fellowship

What it is: The James Jones First Novel Fellowship, in the amount of $10,000, is awarded annually to an American writer of a novel-in-progress who has not previously published a novel. The Fellowship is co-sponsored by the James Jones Literary Society and the Maslow Family Graduate Program in Creative Writing of Wilkes University.

Who’s it for: An American writer who has never published a novel. This includes self-published novels.

The Writer’s Center says : This award provides invaluable monetary support for novelists with a work in progress.

The Hodder Fellowship

What it is: The Hodder Fellowship will be given to artists and writers of exceptional promise to pursue independent projects at Princeton University during the academic year. An $86,000 stipend is provided for this 10-month appointment as a Visiting Fellow; no formal teaching is involved.

Who’s it for: Composers, choreographers, performance artists, visual artists, writers, translators, or other kinds of artists. Most successful Fellows have published a book or have similar achievements in their own fields.

The Writer’s Center says : Unlike fellowships that involve teaching or literary administration, this is a generous award for artists solely pursuing independent projects.

PEN America Emerging Voices Fellowship

What it is: The Emerging Voices Fellowship provides a virtual five-month immersive mentorship program for early-career writers from communities that are traditionally underrepresented in the publishing world. The program is committed to cultivating the careers of Black writers, and serves writers who identify as Indigenous, persons of color, LGBTQ+, immigrants, writers with disabilities, and those living outside of urban centers.

Who’s it for: Underrepresented early-career writers.

The Writer’s Center says : This program lifts up writers who deserve recognition, demystifying the publishing process and introducing them to editors, agents, and publishers.

Persephone Miel Fellowship

What it is: The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting will provide a grant of $5,000 for a reporting project on topics and regions of global importance, with an emphasis on issues that have gone unreported or underreported in the mainstream media.

Who’s it for: The Persephone Miel Fellowships are open to all journalists, writers, photographers, radio producers or filmmakers, staff journalists, as well as freelancers and media professionals outside the U.S. and Western Europe who are seeking to report from their home country but would like to broaden the reach of their reporting by publishing it in international outlets. Applicants must be proficient in English.

The Writer’s Center says : This grant gives a journalist an invaluable opportunity to explore an issue that goes unreported or underreported in mainstream media.

Wallace Stegner Fellowship

What it is: Stanford offers ten two-year fellowships each year, five in fiction and five in poetry. All the fellows in each genre convene weekly in a 3-hour workshop with faculty. Fellowships include a living stipend. Fellows’ tuition and health insurance are paid for by the Creative Writing Program.

Who’s it for: Candidates must live close enough to Stanford to be able to attend workshops, readings, and events.

The Writer’s Center says : This is a non-degree granting opportunity for a writer to get regular feedback from established poets and fiction writers.

Patrick Henry Writing Fellowship

What it is: The Center’s Patrick Henry History Fellowship includes a $45,000 stipend, health benefits, faculty privileges, a book allowance, and a nine-month residency (during the academic year) in a historic 18th-century house in Chestertown, Md.

Who’s it for: Applicants should have a significant project currently in progress — a book, film, oral history archive, podcast series, museum exhibition, or similar work. The project should address the history and/or legacy – broadly defined – of the U.S. founding era and/or the nation’s founding ideas. It might focus directly on early America, or on the myriad ways the questions that preoccupied the nation’s founding generation have shaped America’s later history. Work that contributes to ongoing national conversations about America’s past and present, with the potential to reach a wide public, is particularly sought.

The Writer’s Center says : This fellowship enables applicants to deeply explore a particular historical topic of Washington College’s choosing.

Scripps Fellowship

What it is: This is a non-degree, two-semester program that allows fellows to take environmental journalism classes at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Who’s it for: The fellowship is open to full-time journalists working in any medium who are interested in deepening and broadening their knowledge of environmental issues. It is aimed at outstanding journalists committed to a career in professional journalism. Applicants must have a minimum of five years of full-time professional journalism experience and have completed an undergraduate degree.

The Writer’s Center says : This is a fantastic opportunity for journalists who are interested in environmental issues.

Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing Fellowship

What it is: The Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing offers up to five internationally competitive nine-month fellowships each year. Typically, we award two fiction fellowships (the James C. McCreight Fiction Fellowship and the Carol Houck Smith Fiction Fellowship), and two poetry fellowships (the Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellowship and the Ronald Wallace Poetry Fellowship). Additionally, the Institute offers one third-year MFA fellowship — the Hoffman-Halls Emerging Artist Fellowship — to a current student of UW-Madison, through a closed competition. Each of these fellowships carries with it a stipend of at least $39,000 paid in 9 equal installments beginning October 1, generous health benefits, and a one-course-per-semester teaching assignment in undergraduate creative writing.

Who’s it for: Applicants who have published only one full-length collection of creative writing; unpublished applicants are also eligible.

The Writer’s Center says : This fellowship gives a poet and fiction writer time and space to write, as well as teaching experience.

Grub Street’s Emerging Writer Fellowship

What it is: The Emerging Writer Fellowship aims to develop new, exciting voices by providing three writers per year tuition-free access to GrubStreet’s classes and Muse & the Marketplace conferences.

Who’s it for: Anyone over the age of 18 who demonstrates ability and passion for writing is eligible.

The Writer’s Center says : Much like The Writer’s Center Compass Fellowship, GrubStreet’s program enables writers to advance their craft while eliminating the financial barriers to entry.

Emory University Creative Writing Fellowship

What it is: Emory University offers two-year fellowships in fiction, poetry, and playwriting. The teaching load is 2-1, and the fellowship comes with a $45,000 salary and health benefits.

Who’s it for: Anyone who has received an MFA or Ph.D. in the last five years, and who has creative writing teaching experience, a record of publication, and a first book published or underway.

The Writer’s Center says : This is an opportunity for recent graduates of a creative writing program to gain teaching experience as well as space and time to work on their creative projects.

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CREATIVE WRITING FELLOWSHIPS

The National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowships program offers $25,000 grants in  prose  (fiction and creative nonfiction) and  poetry  to published creative writers that enable the recipients to set aside time for writing, research, travel, and general career advancement. 

This program operates on a two-year cycle with fellowships in prose and poetry available in alternating years. In 2024 we will be accepting applications in poetry.  

Learn  more about past recipients of our literature fellowships  in the Literary Arts Impact section. 

If you have questions about your application, please contact the Literary Arts staff at 202-682-5034 or email  [email protected]

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Residencies, Grants, and Fellowships for Writers: Nailing the Application

Establishing a sustainable writing life starts with making a compelling case for yourself. Learn from writers who’ve earned competitive opportunities to focus on and expand their craft.

Are you a writer seeking more support from your practice? 

Read this article to get tips on what writing samples to submit, how to write your statement of purpose, and specific success story case studies from accomplished literary writers Jonathan Escoffery , Maggie Millner , and Jemimah Wei . These insights come courtesy of a NYFA Learning panel discussion that was moderated by writer Kyle Carrero Lopez . 

Selecting Quality Writing Samples

Regardless of whether you’re applying for a residency, grant, or fellowship, you’ll want to have quality writing samples to submit with your application. Wei, Millner, and Escoffery offer their advice for what to include below.

“As a writer, you actually do have a gut feeling of what you resonate the most strongly with. It could be something that is more recently aligned with your artistic goals as you mature as an artist,” said Wei. She added: “My poet friend Cindy Juyoung Ok said that for her, she recommends thinking about a writing sample in terms of what you won’t regret submitting. There is so much arbitrariness and luck that comes with being accepted to things, so you might as well give it the most sincere shot you have.”

Millner agreed with Wei that your writing samples should represent who you are and what your goals are as a writer. In Escoffery’s experience, it boils down to what he is most excited about: which could be his “last best piece” that wound up in a magazine or something in manuscript form that no one has yet seen. “It’s what best represents me and where I’m at today as an artist. And it tends to be the thing that actually gets me into the next residency or fellowship program.” 

Poets will most likely submit a packet of poems, either a long poem, a section of a long poem, or a packet of various short, lyric poems. Millner has found success considering the pieces as a whole: “I’ve had more successes putting together work that speaks to each other. So there’s a kind of thematic cohesion.”

This speaks to the people reviewing the work, as Millner points out that “Usually, when fellowship juries are selecting you, they’re selecting you on the basis of their hope that you’re going to make something of substantial size through the opportunity,” adding that “A sample that might represent a sort of microcosm of your larger manuscript is very, very helpful for them to get a sense of what this kind of scope of work might be.”

This type of thinking can apply to fiction writers, too. “If you’re selecting an excerpt versus if you’re selecting a short story or an essay, something that’s inherently self-contained. What you want to facilitate for the jury is a kind of reading experience,” said Millner.

Whatever the discipline, Millner encourages you to think of the reviewer as a reader foremost. “These are readers who you want to have some kind of aesthetic, emotional, and intellectual response to your work. Keep in mind that you’re trying to facilitate an experience that has a holism and an arc to it.”

Escoffery underscores the importance of engaging the reader early on. “Readers don’t have a lot of time to sit with your work and consider it. If they know the setting, the main characters, and what the conflict is as early as possible, you can ground them very quickly in your story.”

Getting Feedback and Revising Drafts

Always polish your work before sending it out into the world. Additional eyes will help you to better understand what resonates with readers and will inform changes that will make your work stronger.

Wei sends her draft to first readers who are both writers and non writers. “The reason why is because, firstly, I want to get the non-industry idea on these things. And I also want to know that my work is connecting with people who aren’t necessarily habitual readers. It is also realizing that there are at least two levels of screening. You have screeners who are probably volunteers or alumni screening the first and second level. So I’m thinking of how my work can appeal to a range of people and then based on feedback do revisions.”

She does at least 10 to 15 revisions before sending it out. “It isn’t necessarily about polishing it for an application. I polish everything, anyway,” she added.

For Millner, this sort of polishing could happen in a workshop, through peer feedback, or through the editorial process when you’ve had a piece published. “Often the work that’s been through a workshop or that’s at least been on your hard drive for a couple of months that you’ve fallen in and out of love with enough times that you can look at slightly more objectively will better serve you.”

Escoffery uses the work of other authors as a litmus test for his work. He typically works in multiple drafts, putting drafts aside and revisiting over time. “The last thing for me is reading the work of authors who I feel like my work is in conversation with and if I read one of their stories or a chapter of their novel and I don’t feel embarrassed when I go back to my own work, I think ‘Wow!’ I think my best stuff right now could possibly sit next to my favorite writer’s stuff. That’s when I feel really confident about it and that it’s probably ready to be seen.”

Refining Your Statement of Purpose

A statement of purpose is the other big part of writing applications. It is basically a way of summarizing who you are as a writer, what you’re looking to do, and why the opportunity you’re applying for can help you to achieve it and accomplish larger future goals.

Escoffery asks himself these questions when considering the statement of purpose: “How do I articulate what I’m trying to accomplish on the page? What contribution am I giving or attempting to give to literature? Are these greater conversations that we’re having as artists in the world?” 

He also encourages you to think of yourself as the main character in a story. “What are the stakes of your story? What are the stakes of you getting or not getting this opportunity? Place yourself in the position so that panelists understand you are perfectly poised for whatever it is they are offering you to take that next step, and oftentimes it could be helpful to copy and paste the mission statement off the website that is describing whatever it is they are offering you.” Really learn about what the opportunity is so that you can highlight how it will not only benefit you, but add value to them. 

Wei suggests tailoring the statement to what you’re applying for, as well as finding ways of again connecting with your readers. “I’ve moved towards being more sincere in my statements because that not only plays with the tone of my writing but also helps readers feel a connection with my work.”

More practically, she advises that you: “Think about what language you’re using in your statements and say something really specific about your work and what you’re trying to do as an artist.” For Wei, it is about communicating her vision of the world, or a vision of what she sees literature should be doing and can possibly be doing.

Millner starts with the “What.” Like, “What is the project that I’m hoping to be working on? Or, in the case of a conference, What’s the project that I’m in the middle of that this experience would really feed?” She notes that while it is incredibly difficult and impressive to simply describe clearly and lucidly what your in-progress project is, the idea of distilling it to its core is crucial.

Once you have the “What,” Millner says to consider the “Why” including questions like “Why is this project necessary to be in the world?” and “Why are you the person to make this work?” After answering the “Why is this project necessary” piece, answer “Why me? This is where you zoom away from the project itself and describe what it is about your experience as a writer, and identity and background as a human, that might equip you to be the person to tell this particular story,” she added.

While most application statements have a 1-2 page limit, Wei says to write long and then boil it down. “Because that is actually you explaining to yourself what you’re trying to do.” It may help you feel less intimidated when writing to feel less hemmed in by page count.

Escoffery, who keeps a five-page master document that he excerpts depending on the opportunity, highlights that these statements evolve with time. “The first one I really wrote was for my MFA applications, and it was terrifying. But you keep those documents, and you continue to revise them, and you continue to add your experience, and you continue to elaborate on your life journey. It gets easier and it gets better as you revise and revise.” 

Tracking Opportunities

Wei spoke about tracking opportunities in an excel sheet as a helpful step to take before starting specific applications. “Keep track of everything that’s out there and keep updating as you go. For new residencies, fellowships, and grants, having a column for what the opportunity is, what the deadlines are, and a bullet point list of what the requirements are is very helpful.” [Editor’s Note: visit our “Find and Track Applications” article for more on this topic!].

Wei also recommends separating these opportunities based on where you are in your career, and thinking about how these opportunities play into the larger network of how you’re building your career. For example, she flagged that a lot of early career opportunities are only really available to writers who are at the very start of their careers. A specific opportunity, like Reese’s Book Club’s LitUp Fellowship , is for writers who are non-agented. There are other unpublished opportunities, like the Elizabeth George Foundation grant in the U.S. and the Deborah Rogers Foundation grant in the UK. “Understanding what category you’re applying for is crucial because these opportunities exist within a larger ecosystem,” she says. 

Case Study: Jemimah Wei & Writing Conferences ( The Sewanee Writers’ Conference )

Transitioning to the topic of conferences, Wei suggests Vanessa Chan’s list of “ 19 Conferences for Emerging and Established Writers ” as a good place to start if you’re new to conferences. 

She encourages you to think about the type of environment that works best for you, cautioning that some conferences are intensely social and may mean hanging out with 100 people for two weeks! Also consider how much it will cost, what funding might be available to you, how genre-specific the conference is, and what it will cover. “A lot of conferences are workshop-centric, and include craft talks and special topic classes. And you get meetings with agents and editors and it’s not like the chance to read your work publicly,” she added.

Diving deeper into application materials, Wei notes that what you submit for a conference differs from what you’ll submit for a workshop. As there are several levels to the decision-making process, she suggests putting something forward with a strong immediate hook since reviewers aren’t obligated to read through to the end. An example of an unconventional beginning Wei shared from the first line of Jami Nakamura Lin’s speculative memoir is: “I was born with blue on my butt and a story in my mouth.” 

This line gives a sense of what the voice of Lin’s memoir might be, and also the voice of her writing sample. Wei also suggests considering the voice of your materials as a whole, creating  a consistency that will best represent you to reviewers.

“When I applied for Sewanee, I was talking about how writing for me is not simply an aesthetic endeavor. It’s something I really care about in terms of writing stories and creating a literary vision that has been hard and which depicts moral contradictions and inherently complicated situations with generosity and compassion. That is something I try to do in my work, and that is something I try to emulate as well,” said Wei.

This sentiment touches on another important aspect that conferences bring: the opportunity to make and foster community. In the past, Wei has noted works that have moved her, linked them to her clarity of vision, and mapped it into a desire to develop enduring relationships that can help her to refine, share, and better her work. She used this approach with Sewanee, connecting it back to why the environment would be helpful.

“It’s really important to think about how you’re going to fit into your community and how you might benefit from being in community at the conferences that you apply for,” she said.

Case Study: Jonathan Escoffery & Residential Fellowships ( The Wallace Stegner Fellowship )

Escoffery agreed with Wei’s above sentiments on community, seconding that conferences and workshops can play a major role in your writing career on what opportunities might come your way. Not only do you interact with and meet peers, you will meet editors and agents (and potentially future editors, agents, and reviewers!). 

To that end, he suggests building a basic website if you do not already have one with “a short bio or short statement that talks about what kind of writing and art you’re interested in creating, reading, or seeing in the world.” It will help to have that kind of present, because when you start submitting your work and applications it will act as a landing page where people can find you.

Escoffery shifted to his experience with the Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University (where Wei was also a Fellow), citing a couple of other examples including the Hodder Fellowship at Princeton University and the Radcliffe Fellowship at Harvard University. For background, the Stegner Fellowship is a two year program where Fellows are expected to be in residence in the San Francisco Bay area. They select five fiction writers and five poets to participate each year, who receive a $50,000 stipend each year.

From September to June, Fellows attend a weekly writing workshop where participants read and give critical feedback to their peers. Escoffery highlights that the other six days of the week enable participants the freedom to create. After the program concludes, Fellows can apply for lectureships or TA-ships at Stanford. There’s also what’s called the Levinthal Tutorial , which gives Fellows the opportunity to mentor an undergraduate in a directed independent study.

Pivoting back to statement specifics, Escoffery underscores the importance of being a subject matter expert in what you’re trying to do that’s based on your own unique identity. “It could be one big part of it, depending on what it is that you’re writing and when I say identity, that might be your racial or ethnic background. But it could also be your geographic location where it is,” he said.

For example, Escoffery’s first book If I Survive You (Macmillan 2022), which was a Finalist for the 2023 Booker Prize and Longlisted for the 2022 National Book Award for Fiction, and his forthcoming second book take place in Miami, FL. “I grew up in Miami. I’m writing about Jamaicans and Jamaican Americans. I’m a Jamaican American. But you could also talk about your career or education.” 

Though you might not write in your statement about being the first of the only person to be doing a thing or writing a book on a particular topic, Escoffery counsels that you “might talk about being part of a particular wave of writers and artists who are exploring a particular topic that is underexplored.”

He adds that if the topic/s you explore in your work connect back to conversations that are already happening in the national consciousness, it can help your readers to further understand why it’s important to support it. Just be sure to frame it in your statement, making the connections clear.

Case Study: Maggie Millner & Fellowships ( Olive B. O’Connor Fellowship and Stadler Fellowship )

The O’Connor Fellowship and Stadler Fellowships are year-long residential fellowships comparable to the Wisconsin Institute Creative Writing Fellowship or the Wallace Stegner Fellowship (mentioned above). They offer a chunk of writing time, often after an MFA or after a period of generating a lot of material, to hunker down and not have too many responsibilities while getting health insurance and a monthly check to polish up or finish a manuscript.

Millner shared an example statement that she wrote for the O’Connor Fellowship, highlighting a characterization that she included of the Fellowship and what receiving it would mean to her craft and teaching practice. She also included a synopsis of her project, and more about who she is and the work she was doing. For example: “At the time of writing, I’m nearly halfway through a first draft of the book, having written more than 20 poems that feel essential to the project.”

She continued: “Tell them what you need and where you’re at, and the timeline you’re hoping to complete your manuscript by.” Part of the O’Connor Fellowship involved teaching, so she made sure to highlight what she wanted to get out of that aspect of the program. She emphasizes that you thoughtfully tailor your statement to the opportunity to show the panelists that you fully understand what it is and why you are a fit. Particularly for a program that is housed within a university setting, you want to write for your audience, who are department chairs and professors and part of a larger academic community.

For the O’Connor Fellowship, that also meant including her approach to teaching creative writing. “In my statement of purpose, I was really highlighting both my pedagogy and my particular writing project, and where I’m at in my work.”

Additional Resources

• Poets & Writers’ Submission Calendar – a calendar for contests, residencies, and workshops
• New Pages – a resource for poets, includes calls for submissions, writing contests, and book prizes
• Artist Communities “Find a Residency” – a directory for artists, scholars, educators, and other creative professionals
• Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) Contests & Awards – AWP sponsors six contests and provides an extensive listing of grants, awards, and publication opportunities

–Compiled by Amy Aronoff, Senior Communications Officer

You can find more articles on arts career topics by visiting the  Business of Art section of NYFA’s website .  Sign up for NYFA News  and receive artist resources and upcoming events straight to your inbox.

NYFA Learning  provides artists, creators, students, and arts administrators with tools, strategies, and advice for building sustainable careers. We collaborate with organizations, academic institutions, and cultural partners to bring our programs to a broad range of national and international creative communities.

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Meet the 2022 Aspen Words Emerging Writer Fellows

March 14, 2022  • Aspen Words

Aspen Words recently announced their latest cohort of Emerging Writer Fellows. The fellowships are available in fiction, memoir, narrative nonfiction, poetry, and middle-grade genres and allow participants to access Summer Words, their annual writers’ conference. Summer Words gives remarkable writers at the early stages of their careers a boost into the literary community and the publishing world. Get to know the 2022 Emerging Writer Fellows:

Creative Nonfiction

Mia innocenti, nominated by jacob slichter.

What are you currently reading? 

I’m currently splitting my time between re-reading Carmen Maria Machado’s  In The Dream House  for the fourth time and tackling Robert A. Caro’s collection  The Years of Lyndon Johnson .

Haley E.D. Houseman, nominated by Alejandra Oliva

Haley E.D. Houseman is a nonfiction writer with a focus on communities of humans (and nonhumans.) She’s passionate about nature, how we craft narratives about the natural world and our place in it, and how we maintain archives of those relationships. She is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of HumanxNature, an anthology of unconventional writing that imagines new relationships with the natural world, as well as a journalist and essayist. She is most recently published in Body Language, an anthology from Catapult.

What is your favorite word?

“Susurrus”—a low humming, often associated with the lively hum of bugs, frogs, and other wildlife. I miss the sound so much in the winter, and I can’t wait until spring brings it back! The word is such a perfectly onomatopoeia, it feels and sounds just like that warm buzz.

Justine C Teu, nominated by Helen Schulman

Justine C Teu is a Brooklyn-based writer pursuing her MFA in fiction at The New School, where she also serves as a WriteOn teaching fellow. She has work featured or forthcoming in Passages North, The Offing, Pidgeonholes, Storm Cellar, the VIDA Review, and other publications. She has also received support or attended The Kenyon Review Writer’s Workshop and the Mendocino Writer’s Workshop. Currently, she is working on a campus novel about friend breakups, Chinese superstition, and the ways we negotiate the blurred lines of life’s endings.

What is your writing routine?

I like to write in small, consistent spurts every day. I used to be a morning writer, but as long as I can get a good, concentrated 500 words in I consider that a great success; but I also recognize that some days will be better than others for writing!

Dana Wilson, nominated by Molly Prentiss

Dana Wilson holds an MFA in Fiction from Brooklyn College. Her work has appeared in New England Review, and she has been nominated for the 2022 PEN/Dau Prize for Emerging Writers. She was also a finalist for the 2021 Robert Day Award for Fiction. She lives in New York City and is currently working on her first novel.

What are you currently reading?

Lately, I’ve been reading three or four books at a time—right now I am especially loving Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au. I am also really enjoying Hanya Yanagihara’s To Paradise, and Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s absolutely gorgeous A Ghost in the Throat.

Micah Cash, nominated by Adam Wilson

Micah Cash lives in New York City, where he works as a researcher and bartender. He is also a student at Columbia University’s MFA Creative Writing Program. His fiction has appeared in The Druken Canal and Forever Magazine, and his nonfiction in The Village Voice and The Drift. Micah is from Tulsa, Oklahoma.

My favorite word right now is penumbral: relating to a space of partial illumination (as in an eclipse) between the perfect shadow on all sides and the light.

Lauren Morrow, nominated by Dur e Aziz Amna

Lauren Morrow is a fiction writer from St. Louis, MO, and a 2021-2022 Zell Fellow in the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program where she earned her MFA. She is the recipient of two Hopwood Awards, a Tyson Award in Fiction, an Andrea Beauchamp Prize, and a Ronald Moran Prize. Her work has appeared in the South Carolina Review, Parhelion Literary Magazine, Soon Quarterly, and Young Ravens Literary Review. Before earning her MFA, she worked in arts publicity in New York for a decade (first at BAM, then at Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater). She currently lives in Brooklyn and is working on a short story collection and a novel.

I’m currently finishing The Office of Historical Corrections by Danielle Evans, which is phenomenal. Her short stories are remarkably sharp, moving, and funny. I’m also revisiting Hanif Abdurraqib’s A Little Devil in America . It’s a captivating look at the history of Black performance, and it’s been really helpful to me as I think through my own writing about the topic. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that I’m anxiously awaiting the release of American Fever by my friend (and nominator!) Dur e Aziz Amna! I’ve pre-ordered my copy and can’t wait for its arrival in August.

Leila Nadir, nominated by Sangamithra Iyer

Leila Nadir is an Afghan-American artist, writer, and critic based between Montréal and Maine. She earned her PhD in English from Columbia University and is now Associate Professor of Environmental Humanities at the University of Rochester. Her work has been supported by the New York Foundation for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Andrew Mellon Foundation. She is currently writing an intimate-geopolitical memoir about the wars that rage within and beyond family, including her parents’ marital war, the Cold war, the American Culture Wars, and the wars in Afghanistan.

Record. I’m working on a chapter right now about the impact of the VHS revolution on my childhood home and how my father used the VCR to record every Dan Rather broadcast about Afghanistan. Recording became a medium for the expression of exile, a technological displacement of the need to connect. A couple of days ago, I looked up the etymology of record,  a word that is also borrowed into Persian, the language we spoke at home. At its origins,  record  comes from Latin  recordari ‘remember’, based on cor, cord- ‘heart’. I haven’t been able to get that off my mind ever since. What does it mean when we record? And in these times when we record so much? What are we doing to our hearts?

Javan Howard, nominated by Pichchenda Bao

Javan Howard is a poet and writer from The Bronx, NY. He truly believes that the lived experience is the ultimate teaching tool and uses poetry as a social forum to foster discourse about love, culture, and identity. He has previously facilitated workshops across NYC with The New York State Office of Children and Family Services, Voices UnBroken, The GO Project, and Wingspan Arts. He is currently a Teaching Artist for Teachers & Writers Collaborative and Usdan Summer Camp For The Arts. He is also the TAP Co-Director for Curricula, Mentorship & Facilitation at Community Word Project.

I’m always inspired by my lived experiences. I write poems weekly as I process a few themes. I have a small biweekly writing group that I’ve been with since 2020 and we provide each other with writing prompts that we respond to across genres and take turns leading the sessions for new works and works in progress.

However, I would most definitely say that I’m a late-night writer. I do most of my brainstorming through the day and more fine-tuning and development at night. I do larger revisions for my collections between the summer and the residencies that I teach.

Lucie Berjoan, nominated by Enee Abelman

Lucie Berjoanis a poet based in Iowa City, where she is pursuing a MA in secondary English education. She holds an MFA in critical studies from the Sandberg Instituut and is the author of the chapbook, Changing Clothes. She has had work published in The Breakwater Review and Barnstorm Journal and is an editor for the Ugly Duckling Presse poetry periodical, Second Factory.

Favorites are hard for me, but two words I really like are thyme and hemlock.

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Fellowships, Grants, & Scholarships

A collection of fellowships, grants, and scholarships for creative writing.

Here you will find a variety of opportunities to support your writing pursuits, whether you are a student, established writer, or emerging talent. Our selection includes funding for fiction, poetry, nonfiction, playwriting, and more. Explore the options below to find the perfect fit for your writing goals. 

A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z | #  

• Akademie Schloss Solitude
• Anisfield-Wolf Fellowship
• Bennett Fellowship at Exeter
• Gaius Charles Bolin Fellowship
• CAAP Creative Writing Fellowship
• Dalton Creative Writing Program Fellowship
• Barbara Deming Memorial Fund
• Emory Creative Writing Fellowship
• The Hodder Fellowship
• Kenan Visiting Writer
• Kenyon Review Fellowship
• Ruth Lily and Dorothy Sargent Rosenburg Poetry Fellowship
• Jenny McKean Moore Writer-in-Washington
• National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship
• Olive B. O’Connor Fellowship
• Penn State, Altoona, Emerging Writer-in-Residence
• Princeton Arts Fellowship
• Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center Fellowship
• Radcliffe Institute Fellowship
• Wallace Stegner Fellowship
• Stadler Fellowship
• Steinbeck Fellows Program
• Sustainable Arts Foundation Awards
• Reginald S. Tickner Writing Fellowship
• Tulsa Artist Fellowship
• The Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing Fellowship

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Writing/Reading Resources

Applications for the 2024-2025 Emerging Writer Fellowship are Open

Over the years, we’ve encountered more and more people who love to write but don’t have the money to invest in a creative writing education. As part of our mission to make sure that voices of every type and talent are heard, we developed the Emerging Writer Fellowship to eliminate some of the financial barriers to entry. Through this program, we hope to connect writers to a literary world – a world made richer and more relevant with the contribution of these voices. This fellowship provides three writers per year tuition-free access to the following:

• 4 multi-week courses
• 4 one-day (6hr) classes
• 4 three-hour seminars
• Access to a wide selection of 2024 and 2025 Muse & the Marketplace conference series programming
• Access to GrubStreet's Education Director and/or other program staff members for quarterly office hours for personalized mentorship.

The fellowship year begins in May, 2024. Applications are due Monday, March 11th at 11:59PM (EST). Apply here.

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Announcing the 2023-2024 Steinbeck Fellows.

Literary Hub is pleased to announce the 2023-2024 Steinbeck Fellows: A.J. Bermudez, Francisco González, Alexia Nader, Itto Outini, Amanda Rizkalla and Xueyou Wang.

The Steinbeck Fellows Program is financed by the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies at San Jose State University. It awards six fellowships each in the amount of $15,000 to emerging writers. In recent years, the Steinbeck has emerged as one of America’s premiere writing fellowships. Among their recent Fellows, they count the late Anthony Veasna So, winner of the 2021 National Book Critics Circle Award winner, as well as AKO Caine Prize winner Meron Hadero, Of Women and Salt author Gabriela Garcia, and Forbidden City author Vanessa Hua. Keenan Norris serves as program coordinator.

Read more about the Steinbeck Fellowship here.

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32 grants and fellowships for writers (up to $75,000).

These are grants/fellowships/residencies for writers of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, for playwrights, and journalists. They’re either open now, or will open soon for applications. None of these charge an application fee, and pay from a few hundred dollars up to $75,000. – S. Kalekar

Brown University’s Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America: Practitioner Fellows This is for artists, media makers, and writers. Their guidelines say, “CSREA invites artists, media makers, and writers whose work focuses on race, ethnicity, and/or indigeneity in the United States to apply to be a Practitioner Fellow for the Spring 2023 academic semester. Fellows will have access to Brown University resources and are invited to contribute to the academic community. Projects should focus at least in part on issues of race, ethnicity, and/or indigeneity in the United States, or U.S.-related transnational contexts.” Also, “This program is a virtual spring semester fellowship. The terms of the program may be subject to change.” Some events are virtual, and some are in-person, according to current guidelines. Value: $10,000 stipend, up to $1,500 each in research/project funds Deadline: 28 February 2022 Open for: Unspecified Details here .

Hemingway-Pfeiffer Museum and Educational Center: Writer in Residence The residency includes lodging at a loft apartment in Piggott, Arkansas. The writer-in-residence will also have the opportunity to work in the studio where Ernest Hemingway worked on ‘ A Farewell to Arms’ . The writer is expected to serve as mentor for a week-long retreat for writers at the educational center. Candidates with an MA or MFA in a relevant field are preferred. Value: $1,000, residency Deadline: 28 February 2022 Open for: Unspecified Details here .

A Public Space Writing Fellowship This is an international six-month fellowship for emerging writers, and the aim is “to seek out and support writers who embrace risk in their work and their own singular vision.” Three fellowships will be awarded. Writers get editorial support from A Public Space editors to prepare a piece for publication in the magazine; an honorarium; the opportunity to meet virtually with members of the publishing community, including agents, editors, and published writers; the opportunity to participate in a public reading and conversation with A Public Space editors and contributors. As part of the application process, writers have to submit a prose piece, up to 8,000 words; if selected, the piece submitted will be the piece published in the magazine. Value: $1,000 each Application period: 1-31 March 2022 Open for: Writers who have not yet published or been contracted to write a book-length work Details here (announcement with Submittable link)

Scripps Fellowships for Environmental Journalism Five fellowships are awarded each year at the University of Boulder, Colorado. This is for journalists interested in deepening and broadening their knowledge of environmental issues. Applicants must have a minimum of five years full-time professional journalism experience and have completed an undergraduate degree. Applicants may include reporters, editors, producers, photojournalists, documentarians, and feature writers. Both salaried staff and full-time freelancers are welcome to apply. Prior experience in covering the environment is not required. They welcome applications from international applicants; however, the applicants must be authorized to work in the US to be eligible for this position. Value: $71,000 Deadline: 1 March 2022 Open for: All journalists (see above) Details here (general information), here (FAQ), and here (application portal).

Edward R. Murrow Press Fellowship Applicants must have covered international news as a working journalist for print, broadcast, or online media widely available in the United States, and must be US citizens. The Fellow spends nine months full-time in residence at the Council for Foreign Relations’ headquarters in New York. The program enables the Fellow to engage in sustained analysis and writing, expand his or her intellectual and professional horizons, and extensively participate in CFR’s active program of meetings and events. Value: $75,000 and a modest travel grant Deadline: 1 March 2022 Open for: US citizens Details here .

Biographers International Organization: The Frances “Frank” Rollin Fellowship The fellowship is open to all biographers anywhere in the world who are writing in English, who are working on a biography of an African American figure (or figures), and who are at any stage in the writing of a book-length biography. A publishing contract is not required for eligibility. Memoirs are not eligible. The application includes an excerpt of up to 20 pages. The Biographers International Organization also has other awards , some of which are open for all writers, as well as other resources.  Value: $2,000 Deadline: 1 March 2022 Open for: All biographers Details here .

Poetry Foundation: Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships These fellowships are for young poets who are US residents or citizens. Their guidelines say, “Each year, submissions for the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships open in March. … In line with the ongoing examination of all existing processes and policies across the Poetry Foundation, the submissions and selection processes will be thoroughly examined and discussed before the Foundation begins accepting applications for the 2022 Fellowships.” Application period: Will likely begin in March 2022 Value: Fellowships of $25,800 each (see here ) Open for: US poets aged 21-31 years Details here (see ‘Information on This Year’s Process at the bottom of the page).

The Creative Capital Awards Submissions for these awards will open in March. They are for US-based artists, and they’ll will be accepting applications for different disciplines each year. The cycle for 2023 includes literature (fiction, poetry, non-fiction, genre-defying literary work, and socially engaged and/or sustainable text-based practices). The theme is ‘Wild Futures: Art, Culture, Impact’. The awards are “designed to assist artists who are working at the vanguard of their fields, or who have ideas to propel their artistic practices forward”. They accept proposals from collaborators, as well. They have extensive guidelines. For this cycle they’ll also accept applications for performing arts (including sound and multimedia performance, and more), and technology (including digital art, gaming, interdisciplinary arts, and more). They will award 50 fellowships per cycle. Value: $50,000 each, and an additional set of services Application period: 1 March-1 April 2022 Open  for: US writers (see guidelines) Details here .

National Endowment for the Arts’ Creative Writing Fellowships This is for US-based writers, and they are accepting applications for poetry this year. While the deadline is 10 th March, they recommend submitting applications early. Several fellowships are awarded. Value: Up to $25,000 Deadline: 10 March 2022 Open for: US writers Details here .

The Joan Shorenstein Fellowship This is a residency/fellowship from Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy. “The mission of the Joan Shorenstein Fellowship is to advance research in the field of media, politics and public policy; facilitate a dialogue among journalists, scholars, policymakers and students; provide an opportunity for reflection; … The primary focus for a Fellow is to research, write and publish a paper on a media/politics topic.” Also, “Past fellows include journalists from local, national and international TV, radio, print, and digital media; media and civic technology innovators; nonfiction authors; political advisors and policymakers; leading academic scholars in fields such as media research and political science; and policy analysts. Successful former fellows have come from a variety of backgrounds and career stages.” Applicants must be a working journalist, politician, scholar or policymaker currently or recently active in the field. For the Fall semester, the deadline is in March; for the Spring semester, the deadline is in September. Value: $30,000; residency Deadline: 15 March 2022 Open for: Non-fiction authors and journalists Details here .

Hugo House Writer-in-Residence This residency in Seattle is for practicing, published writers and writing teachers who are experienced working with writers of all levels in a traditional workshop setting, and on a one-on-one basis as a mentor. For this cycle, they are accepting applications for two writers in residence, one for poetry, and one for prose. They should have a specific artistic project they are working on during their residency (e.g., developing a manuscript for publication) and should have a special interest in helping writers become better writers and fostering an appreciation of the craft. The application includes a writing sample. Their guidelines also say, “If you do not meet some of the eligibility requirements, but have demonstrated success in other categories, our panel will weigh the components of your application accordingly. Also, “Writers-in-Residence teach a minimum of two six-week classes per calendar year (subject to approval) as part of the Hugo Classes program and will receive separate compensation for teaching.” Value: $500 per month for 12 months, additional compensation for Hugo Classes Deadline: 31 March 2022 Open for: Published writers Details here .

PEN America: US Writers Aid Initiative This is intended to assist fiction and non-fiction authors, poets, playwrights, screenwriters, translators, and journalists. To be eligible, applicants must be based in the United States, be professional writers, and be able to demonstrate that this one-time grant will be meaningful in helping them to address an emergency situation. Various deadlines are listed for 2022, and the next one is 1 st April. Other deadlines are in June, August, October, and December. Writers do not have to be PEN members to apply. Value: Unspecified Deadline: 1 April 2022 Open for: US writers Details here .

The Marguerite and Lamar Smith Fellowship for Writers These three-month fellowships are to afford writers uninterrupted time to focus on their work at an apartment in Carson McCuller’s childhood home in Columbus, Georgia. A spouse or companion is welcome. The application includes a writing sample of up to 20 pages. Value: $5,000, residency Deadline: 1 April 2022 Open for: Unspecified Details here .

Alpine Fellowship Prizes: Three prizes for creative writers Apart from themed Poetry, Writing, and Theatre prizes detailed below, they also have a Visual Arts Prize , and an Academic Writing Prize . The theme for the 2022 symposium is Freedom . Applicants can enter more than one prize in a single year, but it must be with different pieces of work; one piece of work can only be entered once. — Poetry Prize: This international prize is awarded for poetry on the Freedom theme. Writers can submit one poem or a collection, of up to 500 words. Winners and runners up will be invited to attend the symposium. Value: £3,000 Deadline: 1 April 2022 Open for: All poets Details here and here . — Writing Prize: This international prize is awarded for the best piece of writing on the Freedom theme (up to 2,500 words in any genre except poetry), which is the theme of the 2022 Alpine Fellowship Annual Symposium. The winner and two runners-up will be invited to attend the symposium. Value: £10,000, £3,000, £2,000 Deadline: 1 April 2022 Open for: All writers Details here and here .

— Theatre Prize: This prize is awarded for the best play on the Freedom theme. It is aimed at encouraging theatre writers at the start of their careers to explore and challenge philosophical ideas using the dramatic form. Apart from the cash prize, the winner also gets a rehearsed reading at the Fellowship’s annual Symposium to which they will be invited to attend. Runners up will be invited to attend the symposium to exhibit their work. To apply, applicants must send: 1) A treatment of your idea in response to the theme; up to 500 words; 2) A sample of previous work of at least 10 pages; and 3) A 3-4 sample pages of your proposed script or a 1-2 detailed page synopsis of your story. The final piece must be 45 minutes in length and require no more than four actors. Value: £3,000 Deadline: 1 April 2022 Open for: All playwrights Details here and here .

2022 ALTA Travel Fellowship Each year, fellowships are awarded to emerging translators (someone who does not yet have a book-length work of translation published or under contract) to help them pay for hotel and travel expenses to the annual American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) conference. Part of the application requirement is up to 10 pages of translated work (poetry or prose – see guidelines). Among the fellowships is the Peter K. Jansen Memorial Travel Fellowship,  which is preferentially awarded to an emerging translator of color or a translator working from an underrepresented Diaspora or stateless language. Also see ALTA’s other awards for published works, some of which do not charge a submission fee. Also, “Information about the upcoming conference format, and the format that the annual Travel Fellowships will take, is forthcoming.” Value: $500-1,000 each Deadline: 18 April 2022 Open for: Unspecified Details here and here (scroll down).

Whiting Foundation: Creative Nonfiction Grant Up to 10 grants will be awarded to writers of creative non-fiction books – projects must be under contract with a publisher in the US, UK, or Canada to be eligible. Contracts with self-publishing companies are not eligible. The subjects are history, cultural or political reportage, biography, memoir, the sciences, philosophy, criticism, food or travel writing, graphic nonfiction, and personal essays, among other categories. It is intended for multiyear book projects requiring large amounts of deep and focused research, thinking, and writing, after significant work has been accomplished. The work should be intended for general, not academic, audiences. One of the application requirements is sample chapters, up to 25,000 words. Value: $40,000 each Deadline: 25 April 2022 Open for: Nonfiction books contracted with a publisher in the US, UK, or Canada Details here and here .

Waterston Desert Writing Prize

This prize is for a proposed book of literary non-fiction that illustrates artistic excellence, sensitivity to place, and desert literacy – with the desert both as subject and setting. Writing samples about deserts and natural settings are more likely to be reviewed favorably. Apart from the cash award, there is also a residency at PLAYA at Summer Lake and a reading and reception at the High Desert Museum in Bend, Oregon. Value: $3,000, residency Deadline: 1 May 2022 Open for: All writers Details here and here .

CINTAS Foundation: Fellowship in Creative Writing This is a creative writing fellowship for writers having Cuban citizenship or direct lineage (having a Cuban parent or grandparent).  Applications can be in English or Spanish. Fellows who are not U.S. citizens and who are living abroad must provide a U.S. taxpayer identification number when they accept the fellowship to receive payment. The foundation also offers fellowships for other disciplines – architecture & design, music composition, and visual arts (click the ‘Fellowships’ tab on top of the page). Value: $20,000 Deadline: 1 May 2022 Open for: Writers having Cuban citizenship or direct lineage Details here .

Fund for Investigative Journalism Grants They are open for regular grants, and for expedited grants, as well (see guidelines). These are for articles by US journalists that break new ground and expose wrongdoing – such as corruption, malfeasance, or abuse of power – in the public and private sectors. FIJ encourages proposals written for ethnic media as well as those submitted by journalists of color. Also, “To be considered, foreign-based story proposals must come from US-based reporters or have a strong US angle involving American citizens, government, or business; all stories must be published in English, in a media outlet in the United States.” Value: Up to $10,000 Deadline: 2 May 2022 Open for: US-based journalists and writers; and see guidelines for foreign-based proposals Details here .

Academy of American Poets: James Laughlin Award This is for a second full-length poetry manuscript by a US poet, contracted by a publisher. Manuscripts have to be 48-100 pages long. Translations and new editions of previously published books are not eligible. Apart from a cash prize, the poet also receives an all-expenses-paid weeklong residency at The Betsy Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida. Value: $5,000, residency Deadline: 15 May 2022 Open for: US poets (see guidelines) Details here .

Eugene C. Pulliam Fellowship for Editorial Writing This award is for an outstanding mid-career editorial writer or columnist to help broaden his or her journalistic horizons and knowledge of the world. The annual award can be used to cover the cost of study, research and/or travel in any field. The fellowship results in editorials and other writings, including books. One of the eligibility requirements is, the candidate must hold a position as a part-time or full-time editorial writer or columnist at a news publication located in the US. Applications also are welcome from freelance opinion writers who devote a majority of their time, or derive a majority of their income, from that pursuit. The application includes five samples of editorials or columns. (There is also the Eugene S. Pulliam First Amendment Award of $10,000, for a person or persons who have fought to protect and preserve one or more of the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment; the entrants need not be journalists.) Value: $75,000 Deadline: 20 June 2022 Open for: Editorial writer/columnist at a news publication in the US Details here .

Society of Authors’ grants for works in progress: Two awards They have two grants for works in progress and the form is the same, for both. There are two rounds of funding annually, and deadlines are 1 February and 1 July. The Society of Authors also has other grants it administers. — Authors’ Foundation Grants: These are for authors of fiction, non-fiction or poetry who are contracted, or who are published and working on a project that is likely to have interest from a British publisher. They are for works in progress. Value: Unspecified Deadline: 1 July 2022 Open for: Unspecified Details here .

— K. Blundell Trust Award: This is a work-in-progress award for young British writers of fiction or non-fiction. The work must contribute to the greater understanding of existing social and economic organisation. Value: Up to approximately £6,000 Deadline: 1 July 2022 Open for: British writers under 40 who have had at least one book published (see guidelines) Details here (scroll down).

Pulitzer Center: Connected Coastlines Grants This is an opportunity for US-based journalists. The Pulitzer Center is seeking applications from journalists who want to report stories as part of Connected Coastlines, a nationwide climate reporting initiative in US coastal states. Started in 2019, this initiative is building a consortium of newsrooms and independent journalists across the US to report on the local effects of erratic weather patterns on coastal populations using the latest climate science.  Their guidelines say, “We are eager to receive proposals from staff journalists and freelancers who wish to report on coastal stories, underpinned by recent climate science, data, or research, for publication or broadcast by small and regional news outlets in U.S. coastal states.” They prioritize proposals that can be completed in 1-4 months. The ideal range for most awards will be between $2,000 to $8,000. (The Pulitzer Center also has several other resources, including grants and fellowships – click on the ‘Grants & Fellowships’ tab on top of this page .) Value: $2,000-8,000 Deadline: Rolling Open for: US-based journalists Details here .

The Sidney Hillman Foundation: Labor and Workforce Reporting Grants Their guidelines say, “Please submit a well-focused story proposal of no more than three pages. Think of it as a pitch, much like you would submit to an editor: give us enough preliminary reporting and documentation to demonstrate that the story is solid. The proposal should highlight what’s new and significant about the story, why it matters now, any unique access or documents you may have, and what its potential impact might be.” Journalists must have an outlet already attached. This foundation also administers the Hillman Prize for Journalism for US and Canadian journalists, the deadline for which has passed for this year. Value: Up to $5,000 Deadline: Rolling Open for: Unspecified Details here .

Authors League Fund This emergency fund helps US-based writers, regardless of citizenship status or nationality, and American writers living abroad. It is for authors, dramatists, journalists, critics, short story writers, and poets. Recipients must be career writers with a substantial body of work in one of more of the following categories: 1) Book authors with at least one title published by an established traditional publisher. Authors with multiple titles are given priority; 2) Dramatists whose full-length plays have been produced in mid-size or large theaters and/or published by established dramatic presses; 3) Journalists, critics, essayists, short story writers, and poets with a substantial body of work in periodicals with a national or broad circulation. Common circumstances include: major income loss, including due to COVID-19; illness, or supporting a dependent family member in ill health; overwhelming medical or dental bills; imminent eviction and other forms of housing insecurity; struggling after a natural disaster. They help writers at all stage of life, though priority is given to sick and/or older writers.

Value: Unspecified Deadline: Rolling Open for: US-based writers and American writers living abroad Details here .

American Society of Journalists and Authors: Writers Emergency Assistance Fund The fund is for helping established freelance writers who, because of advanced age, illness, disability, a natural disaster, or an extraordinary professional crisis are unable to work. Writers need not be members of ASJA, but must have credentials that would qualify them for an ASJA membership. Value:   Unspecified Deadline:   Rolling Open for:   Established freelance writers Details here .

Writers’ Trust of Canada: Woodcock Fund This is a last-resource emergency resource for Canadian writers who face unforeseen financial crisis, who are actively working on a literary project. Eligible categories are fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, playwriting, or children’s literature. The program is not intended to be a means of support for writers challenged to earn an income. A crisis of some nature is necessary to be considered. The program does not support screenwriting, journalism, academic works, educational or technical texts, travel guides or other service-focused texts, or formulaic romance writing. Value: CAD2,000-10,000 Deadline: Rolling Open for: Canadian citizens who have published at least two books, or an equivalent body of work Details here and here .

SFWA Emergency Medical Fund

This is a fund created by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, to help SF/fantasy writers pay for funds not covered by medical insurance. The fund is only to cover short-term medical expenses, for emergencies that interfere with the ability to write. Value: Unspecified Deadline: Rolling Open for: Unspecified Details here .

Royal Literary Fund The Royal Literary Fund (RLF) helps authors across the literary spectrum: novelists, poet and playwrights; writers of short stories and writers for children; crime writers, science writers, biographers. The circumstances of those they help vary greatly. Writers can apply for help from the RLF if they are suffering financial hardship and have had several works published in the UK for a general readership, without publication being subsidised. Self-published authors are not eligible. The RLF Committee has to pass applicants for literary merit before they are eligible for help. The committee meets eleven times a year to consider applications. A decision on literary merit and on the award of a grant/pension is made at the same meeting; the applicant is informed straightaway. Value: Unspecified Deadline: Rolling Open for: Those who’ve had several works published in the UK Details here and here .

Bio:  S. Kalekar is the pseudonym of a regular contributor to this magazine. She is the author of  182 Short Fiction Publishers. She can be reached  here .

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Introducing The Center for Fiction / Susan Kamil 2022-2023 Emerging Writer Fellows

We are thrilled to announce the nine exceptional recipients of The Center for Fiction / Susan Kamil 2022-2023 Emerging Writer Fellowships . Sara Aboulafia , Natalie Adler , Han Chang , JP Infante , Diana Kole , Emmanuel Lachaud , Sabrina Helen Li , Juliana Roth , and Jiaming Tang will each receive a $5,000 grant, editorial mentorship, monthly dinners with distinguished professionals from the publishing industry, a membership to The Center’s Writers Studio, publication in an anthology of the Fellows’ work, two public readings, and more.

The Fellows were chosen from an impressive pool of 706 applicants in a blind judging process by Cara Blue Adams , Raluca Albu , and Ian Denning .

Started in 2011, the Fellowship annually provides a diverse group of New York City-based writers with crucial support. This will be the program’s twelfth cohort.

The new cohort was introduced at the 2021-2022 Fellows’ final public reading on Thursday, October 13th.

Each year, the judges panel grants Honorable Mention to praiseworthy applicants who do not receive Fellowships. The panel also recommends Alternates in the event that anyone selected as a Fellow is unable to accept the Fellowship. Honorable Mention is considered a significant achievement and The Center congratulates Isabelle Burden (Alternate), Martin Cloutier , Tanner Garrity , Adam Hutchinson (Alternate), Marina Petrova , and Geeta Tewari .

Meet the 2022-2023 Fellows

Sara Aboulafia

Sara Aboulafia is a multi-disciplinary writer, artist, and comic. She is interested in uncovering intersectional relationships between language, sound, idea, and story. Her writing has appeared in Slackjaw , Points in Case , and Greener Pastures . She has performed at venues including Kishka Gallery in White River Junction, VT and The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts in NYC. She studied sketch writing, comedy, and improv with Upright Citizens Brigade (UCB) and The Second City.

Natalie Adler

Natalie Adler is writing a novel about gay ghosts. She received her MFA in Fiction from Brooklyn College and her PhD in Comparative Literature from Brown University. She works as an editor at Lux magazine and a lecturer at Columbia University. Her essays have appeared in LitHub , BOMB , Electric Literature , Catapult , Autostraddle , and more.

Han Chang is a writer and designer. His work is in Southeast Review and World Literature Today .

JP Infante is an educator, writer and Borough of Manhattan Community College alum. He is the winner of PEN’s Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize and Thirty West’s Chapbook contest. His writing has appeared in Kweli , The Poetry Project , Rigorous , A Gathering of the Tribes , and elsewhere. He has been awarded scholarships and fellowships from the NY State Writers Institute, PEN America and The Center for Fiction. He holds an MFA from The New School.

Diana Kole is a writer from New England living in New York. Her work has appeared in the Kenyon Review , X-R-A-Y , and No Contact , among others. She holds an MS in narrative medicine from Columbia and a BA in comparative literature from NYU, where she received a Tory Dent scholarship in creative writing. She is at work on a novel about manipulation, illness, and desire.

Emmanuel Lachaud

Emmanuel Lachaud is a Brooklyn-born historian, artist, and educator interested in a wide-array of ways humans have told stories. From the moment he learned that history was in fact a narrative as a masters student at City College of New York (CCNY), he has reckoned with the crossroads of truth, perception, and storytelling. In May 2021, he graduated with a Ph.D. in history from Yale University. Since then, he has assumed a position as an assistant professor at CCNY teaching Afro-Latinx and Afro-Caribbean history and culture. Lachaud has likewise run an archival internship at the Hispanic Society Museum and Library funded by the NEH teaching both museum studies and archival paleography. Lachaud’s nonfiction work currently focuses on the nineteenth-century Atlantic and the meaning of “freedom” in postslavery societies in the Caribbean. But it has always been stimulated by a deeper desire to learn a way to tell a new story for the Caribbean—one less obsessed with doom and barebone survival and more fixated on the stories of how people lived, loved, and thrived in a world they knew was against them.

Sabrina Helen Li

Sabrina Helen Li is a writer and teacher from New Jersey. She was a 2022 Iowa Arts Fellow in fiction at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and her writing has been published in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern , the Threepenny Review , the Boston Review , and elsewhere.

Juliana Roth

Juliana Roth was selected as a VIDA Fellow with the Sundress Academy for the Arts for her fiction and is currently seeking a home for her novel and collection of short stories. Her writing appears in the Breakwater Review , Los Angeles Review of Books , Irish Pages , and Entropy as well as being produced as independent films that she directs. Her web series, The University , was nominated by the International Academy of Web Television for Best Drama Writing. Currently, she teaches writing at NYU and writes the newsletter Drawing Animals (subscribe here ) featuring essays, interviews, doodles, and podcast episodes celebrating our interconnection with nonhuman animal life.

Jiaming Tang

Jiaming Tang is a queer immigrant writer based in Brooklyn, NY. He holds an MFA from The University of Alabama and his writing has appeared in such publications as AGNI , LitHub , Joyland magazine, the Masters Review , Epiphany Literary Magazine (where he won a “Breakout 8” Writer’s Award), and elsewhere.

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• Writing Fellowships for 2024 Now Accepting Applications

Erin Duchesne

What is a Writing Fellowship? 

How to apply to a writing fellowship , research fellowships, review eligibility requirements, build a portfolio, write a personal statement/proposal, ask for letters of recommendation , carefully fill out your application , prepare for interviews , writing fellowships for 2024.

Are you an aspiring or professional writer? Are you looking for an opportunity to focus on your craft and get paid while doing it? If this describes you than applying for writing fellowships might be a good fit for you and your goals. 

If you are already working on a passion project or have an idea in your head, there are plenty of writing fellowships for the 2024 season you can apply for. 

A writing fellowship is a fantastic opportunity for creative talents to pursue research and projects in their area of expertise. A fellowship is a short-term employment contract offered by an institution, often a university that usually lasts for one or two academic years. 

Every writing fellowship is different in terms of eligibility, expectations, and compensation. There are fellowships looking for writing professionals in a very specific niche or industry, but many fellowships are open to any type of creative field.

Depending on the fellowship, the successful candidate may be granted with opportunities such as teaching or attending courses at the university and give public readings of their work during their contract. 

Writing fellowships pay their fellows a stipend that is usually enough to be able to commit their full attention to their work. While it varies, it is common to be provided or assisted with finding accommodation, studio space, and often benefits, travel and/or moving allowances. 

As with anything, it is important to do your research and find the right writing fellowships before applying. 

If the idea of becoming a writing fellow truly excites you, then it is time to look at how to research and apply to fellowships and snag a coveted spot. Writing fellowships are a great opportunity to perfect your craft and contribute to your field while getting financial support. This also means that they can be very competitive with so many talented applicants who want the same thing as you. 

With careful preparation, you can stand out from the crowd and increase your chances of success. Again, every fellowship is different, but here are some general guidelines of what it takes to apply for writing fellowships. 

Research carefully!

The first step in any process is to do lots of research before making any decisions. There are writing fellowships all over the world with different start dates and lengths in different subject areas. Find some that align with your wants and needs that you are excited to apply for.

Don’t apply for a fellowship that would require you to move across the country (or the world) if you are not prepared to do so!

Found a writing fellowship that you think you would be perfect for? Before investing time and money into the lengthy application process be sure to thoroughly read the eligibility requirements.

Each fellowship has its own specific criteria for who can apply including experience, citizenship, location, etc. Ensure you fit all of the eligibility requirements before applying. 

A major factor of how fellows are chosen is based on their portfolio . The selection committee wants to see your creativity, quality of work, writing style, and skill to determine if you are the right fit for the fellowship program. 

Aside from your application form and portfolio , many fellowship programs will either ask for a project proposal or personal statement describing yourself, your passion for writing, your accomplishments and your intentions for the fellowship. 

Remember to be thorough and authentic while being diligent to follow all of the requirements of the proposal or statement. 

Many writing fellowships want to get a better sense of you and your work ethic from third party sources. That’s where letters of recommendation come in. Reach out to mentors, professors, and supervisors who will be willing and able to attest to your character and abilities. 

Once you have compiled all of your documents and reached out to people who can support you, it is time to carefully fill out any further application forms. Remember to review all of your application documents for accuracy to avoid any unexpected hiccups in the process and be sure to submit everything before the deadline. 

Some fellowships will invite a select few candidates to an interview to finish out the selection process. If the writing fellowships you applied for have an interview component, do not wait until you are invited to start practicing. The more you rehearse telling your story and sharing your work, the easier it will be to nail that interview. 

We have compiled a list of 12 writing fellowships that are accepting applications between now and the end of 2024 to help you get started in your research.

Nieman Fellowships  

• Application deadline: International applications due December 1; U.S. applications due January 31 
• Eligibility: Working journalists with five or more years of full-time media experience
• Payment: $80,000 stipend paid over a nine-month period 

The Steinbeck Fellows Program

• Application deadline: January 5, 2024
• Eligibility: Exceptional talent in the areas of creative writing, including fiction, drama, creative nonfiction or biography
• Payment: $15,000 stipend 

O’Brien Fellowship in Public Service Journalism

• Application deadline: January 19, 2024
• Eligibility: American journalists with at least five years of professional experience 
• Payment: $75,000 stipend plus moving, research, and travel allowances

MacDowell Colony Fellowships

• Application Deadline: February 10, 2024 (fall/winter); September 10, 2024 (spring/summer)
• Eligibility: Artists and writers at various career stages
• Payment: Residencies include room, board, and studio space

Scripps Fellowship  

• Application deadline: March 1 annually
• Eligibility: American journalists with five or more years of experience working in any medium who are interested in deepening and broadening their knowledge of environmental issues.
• Payment: $71,000

Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing Fellows

• Eligibility: Applicants must have completed or be scheduled to complete an MFA or PhD in Creative Writing by August 15 of the fellowship year
• Payment: $39,000 paid over nine months 

James Jones First Novel Fellowship  

• Application deadline: March 15, 2024
• Eligibility: American author who has not yet published a novel
• Payment: $10,000

The Ben Bagdikian Fellowship Program

• Application deadline: Spring 2024
• Eligibility: US citizens able to commit to a year of  full-time work in investigative journalism
• Payment: $22.68 per hour plus benefits

The Hodder Fellowship

• Application deadline: September 2024
• Eligibility: Promising writers and artists 
• Payment: Academic year at Princeton; $90,000 stipend 

Persephone Miel Fellowship

• Application deadline: Rolling
• Eligibility: Open to all journalists, writers, photographers, radio producers, or filmmakers, staff journalists outside the U.S and Western Europe
• Payment: $5,000 grant 

Patrick Henry Writing Fellowship

• Application deadline: November 15
• Eligibility: Writers working on a broad range of topics related to American history and culture 
• Payment: $45,000 stipend for nine month residency in Chestertown, MD

The Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University

• Application deadline: November 1
• Eligibility: Emerging writers in fiction and poetry
• Payment: $50,000 per academic year (two-year program) plus tuition and benefits

Landing a writing fellowship is an incredible accomplishment and opportunity to focus on your craft. If you think this is an avenue you want to pursue, don’t miss out on your opportunity to apply to some of the exciting writing fellowships for 2024. 

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Memoir Writing Certificate Application Calendar:

The application window for Fall 2024 admission is April 15, 2024 through June 7, 2024. If you'd like to receive reminders and updates, please join our mailing list .  

How to Apply:

Please contact our office if you plan to apply to both programs (Memoir and Novel).  

Writing Samples:

• Tell us a little about yourself. Describe yourself as a person, student, and potential member of the Certificate cohort. What do you hope to gain from the program, and what will you bring to the community?  
• Tell us about the memoir that you are writing or hope to start writing in the program. In addition, please tell us the author and title(s) of 1-3 memoirs that have made an impact on you. Share a little about why these books moved you/what you loved about them.  
• Upload a sample of creative writing, ideally from a memoir-in-progress or personal essay, to give us a sense of how you write creative/narrative nonfiction. If you don’t have any such examples, you could submit a piece of critical writing (review, essay), a short story or section of a novel.  
• ​ Option 1: Write about a time you stole something.
• Option 2: What is the story you don't want your mother to know?
• Option 3: Tell us about a piece of clothing from your past and what it means to you.  
• ​ Linked here is an excerpt from a memoir that a student in the program has been working on. Imagine that you are a member of this cohort, encountering this piece for the first time. Please provide a paragraph of constructive feedback intended to guide revision and help the student move forward.

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Creativity and Community on Full Display at the Raab Writing Fellows Showcase at UC Santa Barbara

2024 Cohort Presented a Wide Range of Projects Highlighting the Broad Spectrum of Student Creativity

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In life and in writing, community is a powerful thing. Every year, the undergraduate students of the Raab Writing Fellowship prove the power of both in a culminating showcase at UC Santa Barbara. Last week, The 2024 Raab Fellows came together to highlight the creativity and insight of a group of writers who have worked together for the better part of a year.

The program, now in its eighth year, is funded by Dr. Diana Raab , a prominent writer, poet, and educator in Santa Barbara. In collaboration with UCSB’s Writing Program, a select number of undergraduates are given the opportunity to explore a writing project of their choosing under the mentorship of Writing Program faculty and in the company of their peers.

The program itself is made up of a year-long research seminar taught by Ljiljana Coklin, who directs the effort and also serves as one of its many student mentors. “There’s an interaction and exchange of ideas in the Raab Program that is really productive and very fruitful. They support each other,” she said. “They learn from each other’s projects and really contribute to each other’s growth. That’s the big advantage of this kind of undefined space in academia.” 

This year, the collaborative spirit of the fellowship lived on in the 20 students who pursued projects that ranged from academic research and critical analyses to poetry collections, memoirs, and video game design documents. Topics included “CTRL: A Critical Examination of the Wellness Industry” by Makenna Stark, “Understanding Why We Spin: The Disc Jockey Explained” by Fay Harvey, and “Growing with Glimpses: A Hybrid Graphic Novel” by Anissa Estrada.

“The community is the thing that stands out to me the most because it’s all these people who are doing these year-long projects that are very daunting and very scary and we all can tend to procrastinate,” said Amitha Bhat, a Raab Fellow who worked on a research project which analyzed perceptions of AI-generated creative writing. “You feel better when you’re procrastinating with someone versus when you’re alone.”

Bhat was one of five Fellows in the “Critical Media” group, where each student’s project similarly dissected and analyzed different facets of media. Each year, the cohort breaks into smaller groups based on broader themes that connect a number of their projects. Apart from critical media, this year’s cohort grouped projects surrounding community, identity, and memoir.

Also in the Critical Media group was Jasmine Liang, a fellow whose project “Elapse” took the form of a video game design document. The piece outlines Liang’s original video game idea that revolves around concepts of time. “I really wanted to make a Video Game Bible, because I’m hoping to go into the video game industry in the future for narrative and game design, and I wanted to develop my skills and demonstrate them in a product,” she said.

Sierra van der Brug, of the “Community Voices” group, produced a journalistic article about the experience of incarcerated women in the region, and in her presentation highlighted the commonalities of the projects in her group. “The interesting thing about all of our projects is that we were all speaking to different members of different communities and finding a way to tell their stories, whether it be blended with our own, or otherwise,” she said. “And so we all did a lot of interviewing and interacting with the community in order to come up with these pieces of writing.”

Projects in this group touched on a wide variety of community experiences in Santa Barbara, ranging from the region’s jazz scene, a project in the form of a multimedia website created by Leo Rubio, to those targeted by a Christian cult, the ICC, in Trinity Marrisett’s project, which was also a website.

The last two groups to present, “Exploring Facets of Our Past,” and “Identity Unearthed,” represented mostly introspective creative writing endeavors that delved into areas of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.

Maya Johnson, who presented with the “Exploring Facets of Our Past” group, self-published a memoir titled Searching For a Black Writer . “As someone who came to college, sort of running from my family situation, dealing with things about my truth and my sexuality, writing this project was really important to me in terms of facing things that I experienced during college,” she said.

For some, these projects represented an outlet for catharsis as students reflected on themes of family, identity, and the experiences that have shaped their lives. Olive Howden, also from the memoir group, wrote a zine about her experience of being born deaf and living with cochlear implants. “I’m sure everyone here has experienced feeling lost. And that’s how I feel a lot of the time. When I’m in a conversation and there’s a lot of background noise. When I listen to music or watch TV, I like to have the captions on so I can follow along,” she said. “And I just have done a lot of reflecting on that this past year, a lot of writing. It’s been very emotional.”

Josephine Yi, of the “Identity Unearthed” group, created a multimedia website to unpack her family’s emigration journey using interviews, photos, poems, and music. “This is connecting across time and generations, being able to know who I am because of my past,” she said. “And ultimately, just feeling really grateful for this life I get to live because I am a first-generation college student, and I get to be here and give voice to my parents and my stories and ultimately bring to light all these different things that they’ve gone through.”

Coklin called this year’s Fellows “spectacular,” saying, “It was really quality projects that they produced this year, there was a lot of ambition and just the sheer range of these projects from academic writing to very personal projects. It’s really kind of joyful to work with students who are so talented.”

To learn more about the 2024 Raab Writing Fellows’ projects, visit raabwritingfellows.com .

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Literature Fellowships, 2022 awards

Three Idaho writers have been awarded Literature Fellowships from the Idaho Commission on the Arts: Brian Blanchfield (Moscow), Emily Pittinos (Boise), Lauren Westerfield (Moscow). Fellowship recipients will each receive $5,000. The awards, given every two years, recognize outstanding writers, honoring work deemed to exhibit the highest artistic merit during peer review. Applicants were reviewed anonymously in a highly competitive process by panelists from out of state and were judged on the basis of existing work and professional history.

2022 LITERATURE FELLOWS

BRIAN BLANCHFIELD is the author of three books of poetry and prose, most recently  Proxies: Essays Near Knowing , which received a 2016 Whiting Award in Nonfiction and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Gay Memoir. Recipient of the Academy of American Poets’ James Laughlin Prize and a Howard Foundation Fellowship, he lives with his partner, John, in Moscow and is Associate Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at University of Idaho.

EMILY PITTINOS is a Great Lakes poet and essayist currently living in Boise. A Visiting Lecturer in Creative Writing at Boise State University, Pittinos has received support from Vermont Studio Center, the Alexa Rose Foundation, and Washington University in St. Louis. Her recent work appears, or will soon appear, in The Adroit Journal, Denver Quarterly, The Iowa Review, Mississippi Review, New England Review, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. Her debut collection, The Last Unkillable Thing (University of Iowa Press, April 2021), is a winner of the 2020 Iowa Poetry Prize.

LAUREN W. WESTERFIELD is a Moscow-based writer, editor, and educator. Her essays and poetry have most recently appeared or are forthcoming in Seneca Review, Willow Springs, Denver Quarterly, Indiana Review, and Ninth Letter . She is an Assistant Professor of English at Washington State University, where she serves as the creative nonfiction and managing editor of Blood Orange Review . She is also the nonfiction editor at Split/Lip Press.

ABOUT THE PANELISTS            

LEAH FRANCESCA CHRISTIANSON earned an MFA from Miami University, where she was editor-in-chief of Oxford Magazine . Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, New Stories from the Midwest Award, and was recently long-listed for The Masters Review Fiction Anthology. Currently, she lives in Oakland, California and teaches creative writing at The Loft Literary Center.

DAVID J. DANIELS is the author of two chapbooks, and the full-length collection Clean , winner of the Four Way Books Intro Prize. A former Stadler Poetry Fellow at Bucknell, he is currently Poetry Editor of Pebble Lake Review and teaches at the University of Denver.

JANALYN GUO is a fiction writer and editor based in Salt Lake City. She is the author of the short story collection, Our Colony Beyond the City of Ruins . Her work has been supported by the MacDowell Colony and the National Endowment for the Arts and has appeared in various literary journals. She also acquires creative nonfiction for the University of Utah Press.

RUTH JOFFRE is the author of the story collection Night Beast . Ruth earned her BA from Cornell University and her MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She now lives in Seattle, where she currently serves as the Hugo House Prose Writer-in-Residence.

STEFAN KARLSSON received his MFA in Poetry from the University of California-Irvine, where he served as the poetry editor for Faultline, UCI’s Journal of the Arts and Literature, and taught as a Composition Lecturer. He is currently based in Long Beach, CA.

JULIE STRAND is a poet and teaching writer living in the Twin Cities of Minnesota. She is the former Program Director of The Cabin in Boise, Idaho and the current Arts Program Director at COMPAS, a St. Paul, Minnesota organization that connects teaching artists with schools and organizations to help people reach their potential through the arts. She received her MFA in creative writing (poetry) from Boise State University.

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Graduate Writing Center: Applying for the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (General)

• Share This: Share Graduate Writing Center: Applying for the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (General) on Facebook Share Graduate Writing Center: Applying for the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (General) on LinkedIn Share Graduate Writing Center: Applying for the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (General) on X

Presenter: Leezet Matos, Psychology, Graduate Writing ConsultantMarie Payne, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Graduate Writing ConsultantThis workshop will discuss strategies for applying for the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. This highly competitive fellowship provides three years of fellowship funding to successful applicants. The workshop will focus on the intellectual merit and broader impacts criteria for NSF grants, the structure of the research proposal and personal statement, suggestions for writing style, and tips for Fastlane submission. 

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Juniper Summer Writing Institute Readings with Jake Skeets and Deb Olin Unferth

Event details.

Tuesday, June 11, 2024

6:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.

144 Hicks Way

Amherst MA 01003

Suggested donation $5-$20

Event Website

Jake Skeets (he/him) is the author of Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers , winner of the National Poetry Series, American Book Award, Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and Whiting Award. His poetry and prose have appeared widely in journals and magazines such as Poetry , The New York Times , and The Paris Review .  He holds an M.F.A. in Poetry from the Institute of American Indian Arts. His honors include a National Endowment for the Arts Grant for Arts Projects, a Mellon Projecting All Voices Fellowship, and the 2023-2024 Grisham Writer in Residence at the University of Mississippi.  He is from the Navajo Nation and teaches at the University of Oklahoma.

Deb Olin Unferth is the author of six books, including the novels Barn 8 and Vacation , the story collections Wait Till You See Me Dance and Minor Robberies , the memoir Revolution: The Year I Fell in Love and Went to Join the War , and the graphic novel I, Parrot , in collaboration with the illustrator Elizabeth Haidle. Her fiction and essays have appeared in over fifty magazines and journals, including Harper’s , the New York Times , The Paris Review , Granta , and McSweeney’s . She was a finalist for the National Book Critics’ Circle Award, and has received a Guggenheim fellowship, three Pushcart Prizes, a Creative Capital Fellowship for Innovative Literature, and fellowships from the MacDowell, Yaddo, and Ucross residencies.

She’s a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, where she teaches in the MFA programs for the Michener Center for Writers and the New Writers’ Project. She also directs the Pen City Writers, a prison creative-writing program at a south Texas penitentiary. Read more about her work at debolinunferth.com.

The Juniper Reading Series readings are open to the public, though public seating is limited. We suggest a sliding-scale donation of $5 to $20 from members of the public attending the reading series. You can donate to our scholarship fund online through this secure link .

Irina Gonzalez

Journalist | Editor | Multi-Passionate Writer | Founder & Editor-in-Chief Raising Gen Alpha

Why I’m quitting my pro-immigration memoir (Moscow Chica) for now

Please  subscribe to my newsletter:  Self-Care For Writers .

Last year, one of my major writing goals was to write the book proposal for my pro-immigration memoir  on being half-Russian, half-Cuban, and ALL American. The name of the book is Moscow Chica: How Growing Up in Russia and Cuba Made Me an American and I’ve been talking about writing and thinking about writing and trying to work on writing this book since I was 25 years old. I am 32 now.

Well, although it didn’t go as quickly as originally planned, I had a big spurt of memoir writing towards the end of the year and it felt GREAT.

Since I had been talking about it since we first met , my then-fiancé insisted that I take Labor Day weekend to work on the memoir. Then, I went to a writing retreat on the coast of Washington State in the beginning of November. Finally, over Thanksgiving weekend, I spent several days at Starbucks and finished a first draft of my proposal.

It felt AMAZING.

I was so proud of the work I had done. And I was even more proud of what I was about to do: Send it to some trusted writer/editor friends for comments, so that I could get back to it, do a solid second draft, and begin looking for an agent. That was one of my writing goals for 2018 .

In fact, I didn’t have as many goals this year as I had last year. I wanted to focus this year, and the things I wanted to focus on were pretty simple: Diversify my income and earn $5k a month as a freelancer, as well as pay off some debts and save money. And, last but not least, I wanted to finish my book proposal and get an agent.

That was the goal, anyway.

But now it’s six months into the year, and I’ve yet to get back to my memoir. When I have tried to look internally and figure out what the problem was, I’ve been able to pinpoint a few things: I have a major fear of success and fear of failure (two similar, but also different, issues that I am dealing with in therapy). Yet despite recognizing those and dealing with them, I still haven’t been able to get back to it.

I thought also that it might be because I’ve had a busy start to the year. I can tell you right now that January I was busy being a newlywed (since we only got married at the end of December), February I was busy finding new writing gigs since I was let go from Brit+Co, March I had travel and my birthday and various social things, April I had my shoulder surgery, and May was mostly focused on recovery.

All of this is true, yes. So I could easily say: Well, I just haven’t had time to work on Moscow Chica yet this year, but it’s going to happen soon!

Yet as I read the news this week, I started to recognize a slow and steady pit in the bottom of my stomach that has likely been there since the 2016 election.

You see, my memoir is a pro-immigration memoir. It’s about immigrants, how hard working and awesome we are. How much we want to chase the American Dream. The things that we sacrifice and do for ourselves, for our family, for our loved ones, as we strive for this. It’s about hardship and overcoming it, and integrating into American culture as we still try to retain our roots (Cuban and Russian, in my instance). All of this could be a beautiful story, and I was really excited to share it with all of you.

Except that I wasn’t anymore.

As the vitriol against immigrants leading up to the election was happening, I was sickened. But I pressed on. As the election happened and that man won, I kept going even though I thought I had lost all hope in America. But, finally, as I read the news this week… I broke.

The truth is that I am no longer proud to be an American, a major theme in Moscow Chica .

I spent my entire childhood striving to be an American, proud to have gotten my citizenship at 15, defending America to friends who saw her flaws. I was strong and steadfast in my belief that this was the best country in the world. After all, my parents told me so. That’s why they came here, bringing my 2-year-old brother and my 8-year-old self. They risked so much and had to little to begin with, all to give us a better life.

There’s no denying that I have a better life thanks to their efforts. Ultimately, I went to a great college (New York University) and graduated with a cum laude Bachelor’s Degree, and a double major in three years to boot. I am proud of my hard work there, too. And I’ve had a successful career, advancing in titles and earnings as my journalism career grew. Now I’m even a pretty successful full-time freelance writer and editor, and I’m proud of that. And I wanted to be so proud to share my story.

But I’m not. Not anymore, anyway.

It’s not that I’m not proud of my story. Or that I’m not proud of all the hard work that I and my parents have done. But I’m not proud to be an American. My book was meant to defend immigrants and humanize us, but even though I still strongly believe in that message, I don’t feel that I can work on it at the moment.

The book was meant to relay a message about American pride, about how much I love that we are a nation of immigrants. I still love that, but I am also doubting my ability to write a hopeful, optimistic book at the moment. That’s what this book deserves to be, but now is not the right time for me to do it.

I’m not hopeful. I’m not optimistic.

This week, as I read about the humanitarian crisis happening at our nation’s borders, with children being ripped away from their parents, I think back to the day when my family came to the U.S. on April 6, 1994. That was over 14 years ago.

When we first landed in Miami (not-quite-so-legally), my mom, my brother, and I were taken to some immigration room and were held there all day while our paperwork was figured out. I remember feeling alone and scared, and I remember my brother crying for hours. But I wasn’t truly alone. I was with him, and I was with my mother. Soon enough, my father joined us too. We were reunited within 24 hours.

That’s more than I can say for the children coming through at the Mexico-Texas border today. The things happening there are more terrible than I can imagine. I’ve seen some of the photos, watched some of the videos, and I can’t stand it. It’s disgusting, and I am horrified by what is happening in this country that I once proudly chose to call home.

Most of the people I personally know are equally horrified, thank goodness. I feel like I’ve chosen my friends well. Still, this is happening. It’s real and I feel helpless to stop it, even though there are things that we can all do to help ( here is a helpful list , in fact).

But what I can stop is working on this memoir that no longer feels like a story I feel comfortable telling. Sure, some people might tell me that now more than ever we need to hear the GOOD immigrant stories, and I would agree with that, but I am just too emotionally drained and hopeless to tell mine right now. So, for now, I am setting aside Moscow Chica to focus on other projects.

The book and the idea won’t be going away forever, and they might not even be going away for long. Who knows, I might get some spurt of energy or a new idea to pivot the memoir or… something else might happen. Life might happen, and I might be back to it in a month or a year or even a day. I honestly don’t know right now.

What I do know is that this feeling at the pit of my stomach has been there since election night. I remember posting the very next day that I felt hopeless, and I continue to feel that way today. I’m not proud to be an American, and I can’t honestly write about that having that feeling as a child or teen right now. Maybe someday, when I have more distance from what is happening TODAY, I’ll be able to get back to it.

In the meantime, you can always check back here for more of my writing. I will, for SURE, continue to write about immigration and Latinx issues . Don’t worry, that’s not going anywhere. If anything, I hope to reach more people through my journalism work than I can through a book right now. You can also see my writing at  21Ninety ,  mitú ,  Fierce by mitú  and Romper  primarily, but elsewhere too.

So I hope you’ll check back here for updates. The Moscow Chica isn’t gone… She’s just, well, taking a break for now until I can recapture some of that American Dream magic.

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Eight Books to Read If You’re in a Creative Slump

These books dispense practical advice on managing one’s ambitions—or describe the dread of writer’s block with precision and humor.

Having a creative block is an invisible psychological torment. You sit and stare at a computer screen or a blank page, willing ideas to come into your head. But none appear, or they’re all terrible, and eventually you begin to wonder whether you’ll ever have an original thought again. The worst part is the horrible feeling of helplessness that comes with a block. The condition is like quicksand: The harder you try to dig your way out of it, the more your own lack of inspiration overwhelms you.

The books below depict writers, artists, and other creators struggling with stalled projects, or discuss the mysterious source of ideas, and together they form a clearer picture of the affliction. Blocks tend to crop up when we put undue pressure on ourselves to perform or to attempt lofty tasks. These books dispense practical advice on managing one’s ambitions, or describe feeling stuck with such precision and humor that they remind us that we’re not alone and the state won’t last forever.

The Luminous Novel , by Mario Levrero

“This whole book is the testimony of a monumental failure,” the late Uruguayan author Levrero writes in a prefatory section of The Luminous Novel . After being awarded a Guggenheim fellowship in 2000 to complete an unfinished project also referred to throughout as “the luminous novel,” Levrero keeps a yearlong diary in which he seemingly does everything except work on the book: He plays endless hands of a digital solitaire game and obsessively writes programs in Visual Basic on his computer, analyzes his dreams, purchases furniture, attempts to set up air-conditioning in his apartment, longs to reignite his sexual relationship with a woman named Chl, and invents a whole family saga out of the comings and goings of the pigeons on his neighbor’s roof. Somehow it’s riveting, thanks to Levrero’s dry humor and honesty. As he tries to wean himself off his various coping mechanisms and write—and doesn’t manage to, over and over again—we’re reminded that so much of creative work is an attempt to capture something impossible to capture, and that one can find transcendence and meaning even in failure.

Scratched , by Elizabeth Tallent

In the 1980s and early ’90s, Tallent was a glittering literary success, having published five books by her late 30s. Then came two decades of silence. This memoir answers the question of what happened by charting a life warped by perfectionism, from Tallent’s childhood attempts to draw approval and affection from her aloof parents—particularly a mother who refused to hold her as a newborn—into multiple ill-fated marriages and the raising of a son. The devious agony of perfectionism is that it “can present not as delusion, but as an advantageous form of sanity,” Tallent writes, even as it destroys the vital quality that makes a work of art succeed. The prose itself mirrors the compulsion: We’re constantly doubling back to untangle the book’s dense, breathless, image-rich sentences, so that we viscerally feel the same obsessive repetition Tallent describes. Her progress is slow and halting, but eventually she manages to choose imperfect reality over the unreal beauty of an imagined ideal—because, as she points out, “stories thrive on exactly those risks perfectionism forecloses.”

Read: ‘I don’t believe in writers’ block’

Wonder Boys , by Michael Chabon

This romp of a novel captures—for better or worse—the precise feeling of suffocation that comes when you’re mired in an intractable project. The 41-year-old writing professor Grady Tripp has been toiling over his “immense careering zeppelin” of a novel manuscript for seven years; it currently spans 2,611 pages with no end in sight. When his editor and best friend, Terry Crabtree, comes to town for a literary festival at Grady’s university, things quickly go sideways: One of Grady’s students steals a priceless jacket from the husband of Grady’s mistress, who’s just discovered that she’s pregnant with Grady’s child, which Grady must tell his estranged third wife about at a Passover seder with her entire family. But even as Grady races from crisis to crisis, he returns incessantly to the knotted problem of his manuscript, a burden just as real as the dead dog, dead boa constrictor, and misplaced tuba that end up in his car’s trunk over the course of the weekend. Wonder Boys suggests the lengths we’ll go to create our own obstacles, and offers up twisted solace for anyone struggling with creative isolation.

Where Good Ideas Come From , by Steven Johnson

Most books about creativity focus on the individual: Here’s how you can awaken your latent artistic or entrepreneurial talent. Where Good Ideas Come From flips that approach on its head. It scrutinizes certain environments—cities, for example, or coral reefs—and distills general principles about what makes these places hotbeds of innovation. Along the way, the book debunks many of our assumptions about how inspiration works—the lone inventor, the sudden flash of insight. Instead, Johnson writes, “most great ideas come into the world half-baked, more hunch than revelation.” They develop slowly, erratically, often by bumping into an entirely unrelated idea or cobbling together parts designed for utterly different purposes. The book itself is a delightful intellectual adventure: To illuminate the importance of serendipity, error, and “liquid networks,” Johnson draws on examples as wide-ranging as Darwin formulating his theory of natural selection, the rise of double-entry bookkeeping, and the invention of the World Wide Web. Variety and openness are crucial for good ideas to develop, Johnson makes clear, and his book encourages us to cultivate these qualities in our own lives.

Read: The Rick Rubin guide to creativity

So Many Olympic Exertions , by Anelise Chen

Athena is in her eighth year of an American Studies Ph.D. program, struggling to complete her dissertation. After she hears that her ex-boyfriend has died by suicide, just getting through the day becomes an act of endurance. Which is fitting, because Athena’s dissertation is about sports, and suddenly she can’t stop watching videos of marathon runners crossing finish lines in great agony. Written in propulsive segments that move seamlessly between fiction and nonfiction, the novel reads in part like a fascinating hybrid essay on the psychological impact of competition and the ubiquity of sports metaphors, which Chen points up to illustrate how much the mentality of never quitting, of winning at all costs, has seeped into our society’s obsession with achievement. By the end, forcing ourselves to finish things just to finish them becomes absurd—an invitation to reevaluate for those toiling on seemingly endless projects. “If Sisyphus were an athlete, he would have been the best,” Chen writes wryly, “the universe’s one standout stone-roller.”

What It Is , by Lynda Barry

The astonishing What It Is defies categorization: It’s part graphic memoir, part meditation on creativity, part self-help “activity book” for artists. Barry, a cartoonist, intersperses scenes from a childhood spent furtively drawing despite her unsupportive mother with full-page collages centered on generative questions—including “WHAT IS THE PAST?” and “WHERE DO CHARACTERS COME FROM?” These are richly adorned with snippets of cursive text, old stamps, and textured drawings of deep-sea creatures, birds, and ghosts. The effect is intentionally childish, faded, and a little creepy, because dredging up images from one’s past is an emotional effort central to the book. The core of the arts is play, Barry argues: something children undertake with great seriousness until they learn to be aware of what others think, which can choke off creativity. But the key, when you’re blocked, isn’t simply to think harder. It’s to relinquish control, “to be able to stand not knowing long enough to let something alive take shape,” Barry writes. Her exercises at the end of the book strengthen this ability and help readers reclaim the tactile, thought-provoking pleasure of putting marks on a page.

Read: When you need a little nudge to write

Out of Sheer Rage , by Geoff Dyer

Having accumulated a large number of notes in preparation for a “sober, academic study of D.H. Lawrence,” Dyer ruefully admits on the very first page of this book that it was all a huge waste of time. What follows is a chatty, fastidious record of Dyer’s distractions from his putative goal, as he travels from a Greek island to Rome to Taormina to Oxford to Oaxaca to Taos. But despite all of his very funny grumblings about how miserably he’s failing to write his book about Lawrence, we get a strong sense of the writer, whose books, quotes, moods, biographical information, and general worldview saturate Out of Sheer Rage . This freewheeling, sideways solution to the problem is part of the book’s brilliance. “Spare me the drudgery of systematic examinations,” Dyer writes in one typically opinionated passage, “and give me the lightning flashes of those wild books in which there is no attempt to cover the ground thoroughly or reasonably.” It’s a useful, liberating reminder that the obligations and expectations imposed on creative work—either by ourselves or others—are never as rigid as they might seem.

The Paris Review Interviews, Vol. 1

The Paris Review has been asking great writers how and why they write since its inception in 1953, and its archive of interviews has become a literary institution in its own right. The famous interviewees in this volume, which collects 16 exemplars of the form, come across as reassuringly human. You’ll find Elizabeth Bishop being rueful about how many poems she gives up on, Kurt Vonnegut admitting to feeling miserable after a slew of bad reviews, and Rebecca West reflecting that her books “don’t seem to me as good as they might be.” Then there are practical little tricks to steal: To avoid being blocked, for instance, Ernest Hemingway would stop writing when he knew what would come next in a work in progress, so he could continue more easily the next day. Reading these authors’, editors’, and screenwriters’ discussions of their work, their wildly different voices all jostling together, somehow frees you up for your own creative endeavors. There are so many ways to produce art, these interviews make clear, that you might as well just be yourself—to simply get down what you think, and hope for the best.

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