Last updated January 3, 2023
Are you an emerging or established creative or non-fiction writer? Check out these unique funding and residency opportunities for writers. Deadlines change often, so be sure to bookmark these fellowships to your ProFellow account for updates and announcements.
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.
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 receive a stipend of $26,000 annually and Stanford University pays educational costs and medical health insurance.
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.
Milton Postgraduate Fellowships
The Milton Fellowship is a 9-month opportunity for Christian writers to complete their first book-length manuscript of fiction, poetry, or creative nonfiction at Seattle Pacific University sponsored by Image Journal. Each fellow will be matched up with a literary mentor to act as an occasional consultant on their book project. Fellows receive free accommodation and a $500 monthly stipend for their time with us, as well as health and dental coverage. Applicants must be US citizens or residents and possess an M.A. in English Literature, Creative Writing, or the humanities, or an MFA in Creative Writing.
Posen Society of Fellows
Posen Society of Fellows is a unique international fellowship for junior scholars and emerging fiction writers. Each member of the Posen Society of Fellows receives a two-year, $40,000 award, as well as a special opportunity to collaborate with peers and learn from seasoned scholars and writers. Eligible scholars should be completing a doctoral dissertation on a topic related to modern Jewish history or culture. Eligible fiction writers should be working on a Jewish-themed novel or short story collection, and should not yet have published their first book. The Posen Society of Fellows is not restricted to any religion or nationality.
Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowships
Five Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships in the amount of $25,800 each will be awarded to young poets in the U.S. through a national competition sponsored by the Poetry Foundation, published 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.
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 $10,000, 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.
PEN America Emerging Voices Fellowship
The PEN America Emerging Voices Fellowship is a literary mentorship based in Los Angeles that aims to provide new writers who are isolated from the literary establishment with the tools, skills, and knowledge they need to launch a professional writing career. The 7-month fellowship from January to July includes professional mentorship, classes at the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program, access to Author Evenings and Master classes, a 25-hour volunteer project, voice instruction class, and public readings. Fellows receive a $1,000 stipend. Applicants need not be published, but the fellowship is directed toward poets and writers of fiction and creative nonfiction with clear ideas of what they hope to accomplish through their writing.
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.
Bellagio Residency Program: Academic Writing
The Bellagio Residency program in Italy offers researchers in the humanities, natural sciences, social sciences, and other academic disciplines a serene setting conducive to focused, goal-oriented work. Residencies last between 2-4 weeks. The Center has a strong interest in proposals that align with the Foundation’s work to expand opportunities and to strengthen resilience for poor or vulnerable people, in particular projects relevant to the Foundation’s core issue areas: Advance Health, Revalue Ecosystems, Secure Livelihoods, and Transform Cities. Room and board are provided to all residents and their spouses/partners.
Allen Ginsberg, Anne Waldman, and Anselm Hollo Graduate Fellowships
The fellowships are awarded annually to three incoming MFA Creative Writing and Poetics students (residency program) at Naropa University in Boulder, CO. Students must be enrolled full-time and maintain a 3.7 GPA while attending Naropa. The recipients will receive full funding (tuition and fees), plus an additional $5,000 scholarship as well as a $3,000 stipend as compensation for duties performed as a requirement of the fellowships. Fellowship recipients are trained in pedagogy and have an opportunity to teach college-level writing or work in the Naropa Writing Center.
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 are 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.
Bellagio Residency Program: Arts and Literary Arts
The Bellagio Arts & Literary Arts residency in Italy is for composers, fiction and non-fiction writers, playwrights, poets, video/filmmakers, and visual artists who share in the Foundation’s mission of promoting the well-being of humankind and whose work is inspired by or relates to global or social issues. The residency is for artists seeking time for disciplined work, reflection, and collegial engagement. The Center typically offers stays of 2-4 weeks long, in a community of 15 fellows that typically includes 3-5 arts resident fellows. Artists of significant achievement from any country are welcome to apply.
American Academy in Rome Prize
Each year, the Rome Prize is awarded to thirty emerging artists and scholars in the early or middle stages of their careers who represent the highest standard of excellence in the arts and humanities. Prize recipients are invited to Rome, Italy for six months or eleven months to immerse themselves in the Academy community. Each Rome Prize winner is provided with a stipend, meals, a bedroom with private bath, and a study or studio. Those with children under 18 live in partially subsidized apartments nearby. Winners of 6-month and 11-month fellowships receive stipends of $14,000 and $26,000, respectively.
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.
The 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 $75K. Open to all citizenships.
Patrick Henry History Fellowship
Applications from published writers and established scholars are welcome. Applicants should have a significant book-length project currently in progress. The project should address the history and/or legacy – broadly defined – of the American Revolution and the nation’s founding ideas. It might focus on the founding era itself, or on the myriad ways the questions that preoccupied the nation’s founders have shaped America’s later history. The fellowship includes a $45,000 stipend, health benefits, faculty privileges, a book allowance, and a nine-month residency.
Charles Wallace India Trust Fellowship in Creative Writing
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 professional or academic experience.
Swann Foundation Fellowships
The Swann Foundation seeks to award one fellowship annually (with a stipend of up to $15,000) to assist the fellow in his/her ongoing scholarly research and writing projects in the field of caricature and cartoon. To be eligible, one must be a candidate for an M.A. or Ph.D. degree in an accredited graduate program in a university in the U.S., Canada or Mexico, or be engaged in postgraduate research within 3 years of receiving an M.A. or Ph.D. Individuals who are not U.S. residents but who otherwise meet the above academic qualifications may also apply and be considered for a fellowship, contingent upon the applicant’s visa eligibility.
© Victoria Johnson 2016, all rights reserved.