nea creative writing fellowship 2021

NEA Creative Writing Fellowships Q&A

Learn how to apply for the $25,000 NEA Creative Writing Fellowship in poetry before applications are due on March 13. Robin Beth Schaer , one of three Ohio writers to win the 2021 poetry fellowship, will answer your questions about applying for the fellowship and provide tips on how to make your application stand out.

Details: NEA Creative Writing Fellowships Q&A takes place Monday, February 5 from 7:00-8:00pm remotely online via Zoom.

‍ Format : Short informational presentation w/ Q&A session.

‍ Location : This program takes place remotely online via Zoom.

‍ Cancellations & Refunds : This is a free event. If you have any RSVP/registration questions, email [email protected].

Work with the best...

Robin Beth Schaer is the author of the poetry collection Shipbreaking. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ohio Arts Council, Yaddo, MacDowell, and others. Her work has appeared in Tin House, Bomb, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. She has taught writing in New York, New Jersey, and Ohio, and she worked as a deckhand aboard the Tall Ship Bounty, a 180-foot ship lost in Hurricane Sandy.

This Q&A takes place remotely online via Zoom

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UH Poet Awarded National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship

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Joy Priest is First-Year Doctoral Student in Creative Writing Program

By Sara Tubbs 713-743-4248

February 23, 2021

Joy Priest has been writing ever since she could hold a pen.

“I’ve been a poet all my life, but I was a reader first,” said the first-year doctoral candidate in the University of Houston’s renowned Creative Writing Program. “My mother would read to me every night, and when I was about three years old, I started taking the book from her because I wanted to read it myself.”

That love of reading evolved into writing short stories and poems, and today, Priest is an award-winning poet who has received a Creative Writing Fellowship of $25,000 from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). She is one of 35 writers selected out of 1,600 applicants through a highly competitive, anonymous process and judged on the basis of artistic excellence of the work sample they provided.  

 “The National Endowment for the Arts is proud to support these 35 talented poets through creative writing fellowships,” said Amy Stolls, director of literary arts at the Arts Endowment. “These fellowships often provide writers with crucial support and encouragement, and in return our nation is enriched by their artistic contributions in the years to come.” 

Priest  is nationally known for “Horsepower”   (Pitt Poetry Series, 2020), a collection of poems about growing up in Louisville, Kentucky across from Churchill Downs “on the backside of the racetrack.” The book won the Donald Hall Prize for Poetry and was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award's John Leonard Prize for best first book in any genre. She is also the recipient of the 2020 Stanley Kunitz Prize from the “American Poetry Review,”   and her poems have appeared in the Academy of American Poets’   “Poem-a-Day” and “Virginia Quarterly Review, ”  among others . This month, “The Atlantic” began featuring Priest’s poem "Ghosts in Schools" as part of the publication’s “Inheritance” project about American history, Black life and the resilience of memory.

“I write a lot about race,” explained Priest. “I am very interested in the connections between America and Germany when it comes to racial ideologies.”

As a NEA Fellow, Priest will be able to set time aside for writing, research, travel and general career advancement. She plans to use her award money to learn more about her familial origins and write a series of poems while studying at UH. Priest’s workshop professor, Martha Serpas, an acclaimed poet herself, says Priest fits perfectly with an exceptional class of poets at UH because her work and presence are “inventive and fearless.”

“Joy told me, ‘I’ll never stop writing about my family and Kentucky and racism.’ What I admire about her process is that she incorporates a southern Kentucky vernacular in her work to deal with these complicated subjects,” Serpas shared.

Since 1967, the Arts Endowment has awarded more than 3,600 creative writing fellowships totaling over $56 million. Many American recipients of the National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and Pulitzer Prize in Poetry and Fiction were recipients of National Endowment for the Arts fellowships early in their careers.

“As a writer, you don’t know how your work going to be received,” Priest added. “I think this award is validation that the work I am putting out there is quality work. It’s good to be read.”

The full list of FY 2021 Creative Writing Fellows is available  here .  

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Baldwin receives national endowment for the arts fellowship.

May 4, 2021 by Erin Chambers

Poet and Ph.D. student Jamaica Baldwin is the recipient of a 2021 National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Creative Writing Fellowship, which the NEA announced in February as part of its first round of FY 2021 arts funding. These fellowships—which each come with an award of $25,000 to support writing, travel, research, and general career advancement—are very competitive: of the 1,601 eligible applicants this year, only 35 winners were chosen. Baldwin is the second member of the Department of English to receive an NEA Creative Writing Fellowship in recent years, after poet and Assistant Professor Hope Wabuke, who received her NEA fellowship in 2017 .

Jamaica Baldwin grew up in Santa Cruz, CA. She earned her B.A. in Afro-American Studies from Smith College and her M.F.A. in poetry from Pacific University before coming to UNL. She is pursuing her Ph.D. in English with a focus in Creative Writing (poetry), African Diasporan Literature, and Women and Gender Studies. Her work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Prairie Schooner , Guernica , The Adroit Journal , World Literature Today , The Missouri Review , and TriQuarterly , among others.

The NEA Creative Writing Fellowship is just one of many accolades she has received this year; she won the 2021 RHINO Editor's Prize for her poem “Father Weaver,” and was awarded the inaugural Sunita Jain Literary Award for Excellence in Poetry in the UNL Department of English. She is the 2019 winner of the San Miguel de Allende Writers Conference Contest in Poetry, and was a runner-up for the 2020 Tupelo Press Berkshire Prize. Her work has been supported by Hedgebrook, Furious Flower, and the Jack Straw Writers Program.

To learn more about Jamaica Baldwin and her poetry, visit her website .

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UTEP Creative Writing Lecturer Earns National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship

Last Updated on March 01, 2021 at 3:00 PM

Originally published March 01, 2021

By UC Staff

UTEP Communications

EL PASO, Texas – The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) named The University of Texas at El Paso’s alumnus and faculty member Aldo Amparán as one of its 2021 Literature Fellows in Creative Writing for Poetry.

Amparán, an adjunct professor in the Department of Creative Writing who has taught at UTEP since 2016, was selected among more than 1,600 writers who applied for the 35 NEA fellowships that come with a $25,000 prize.

Amparán is a two-time UTEP graduate who earned his bachelor’s degree in English and American Literature in 2012 and his MFA in creative writing six years later.

John Wiebe, Ph.D., UTEP provost and vice president for academic affairs, lauded Amparán on his latest honor.

“This is indeed an impressive accomplishment that reflects extremely well on you and the University,” Provost Wiebe said in a congratulatory note.

Sasha Pimentel, associate professor of creative writing, said that this prestigious NEA honor marks Amparán among the top U.S. poets. She said that in a field that is deeply competitive, her colleague’s literary rise has been meteoric.

“This is huge,” said Pimentel, who called Amparán’s poetry stunning. “ It is the kind of writing that calls forth from our cities with a knowing, and a clarity, that sustains. He understands how deeply power is forged in language, of the cultural markers we make of ‘belonging,’ and Aldo Amparán knows how to make heard and visible the complexities of identity and kinship. His is a language that beckons, reaches and transforms.”

The NEA recognition is the latest accolade for Amparán, a poet, writer and translator who grew up in El Paso and Juárez, Mexico. In 2020, he earned the coveted Alice James Award for poets. It was his first national honor. As a result, his full-length collection of poems, “Brother Sleep,” will be published in 2022 by Alice James Books, one of the country’s top poetry publishers.

He said the NEA prize will give him the economic freedom to continue to edit and promote the publication of “Brother Sleep,” and to focus on other writing projects such as his second poetry manuscript.

“This honor demonstrated a personal growth in my voice – a growth that is heard and valued, and that is something I am immensely grateful for,” Amparán said.

The UTEP faculty member thanked his students and department colleagues, especially Pimentel, his thesis director, for their roles in his success. He said Pimentel, an internationally recognized poet, inspires him to take his language and form beyond his comfort zone. He added that he continues to learn about his craft through his role as a creative writing lecturer.

Amparán’s other honors include a fellowship with CantoMundo, an American literary association that supports Latinx poets and poetry. His work can be seen in such top journals as AGNI, Kenyon Review and Washington Square Review.

Click here to read some of Amparán’s work.

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National Endowment for the Arts

Creative Writing Fellowships

Note to PIs

The following program summary is intended to be used for informational purposes only. It does not replace the sponsor’s actual funding opportunity announcement. Always review the most recent version of the sponsor’s full announcement to verify that the deadline has not changed and to identify the most current program requirements.

About the Program

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 recipients to set aside time for writing, research, travel, and general career advancement. Applications are reviewed through an anonymous process in which the only criteria for review are artistic excellence and artistic merit. To review the applications, the National Endowment for the Arts assembles a different advisory panel every year, each diverse with regard to geography, race and ethnicity, and artistic points of view.

The program operates on a two-year cycle with fellowships in prose and poetry available in alternating years. For FY 2020, which is covered by these guidelines, fellowships in  prose (fiction and creative nonfiction)  are available. Fellowships in poetry will be offered in FY 2021 and guidelines will be available in December 2019.  You may apply only once each year .

Eligibility

You are eligible to apply in Prose if, between January 1, 2012, and March 6, 2019, you have had published: At least five different short stories, works of short fiction, excerpts from novels or memoirs, or creative essays (or any combination thereof) in two or more literary journals, anthologies, or publications that regularly include fiction and/or creative nonfiction as a portion of their format; or a volume of short fiction or a collection of short stories; or a novel or novella; or a volume of creative nonfiction. To qualify, work must have been first published with an eligible publisher between these dates, not only reprinted or reissued in another format during this period.

Award Amount/Award Period

Application deadline.

Literature Fellowships:  Prose:  March 6, 2019.

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Senior lecturer matthew olzmann receives nea fellowship.

Matthew Olzmann, a senior lecturer in English and Creative Writing has received a prestigious fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Olzmann is the author of the collections Mezzanines and Contradictions in the Design.

On February 4th, 2021, the National Endowment for the Arts announced that Matthew Olzmann is one of 35 writers who will receive an FY 2021 Creative Writing Fellowship of $25,000. This year's fellowships are in poetry and enable the recipients to set aside time for writing, research, travel, and general career advancement. Fellows are selected through a highly-competitive, anonymous process and are judged on the basis of artistic excellence of the work sample they provided. Olzmann was selected from 1,601 eligible applicants. The full list of FY 2021 Creative Writing Fellows is available here .

"The National Endowment for the Arts is proud to support these 35 talented poets through Creative Writing Fellowships," said Amy Stolls, director of literary arts at the Arts Endowment. "These fellowships often provide writers with crucial support and encouragement, and in return our nation is enriched by their artistic contributions in the years to come."

Matthew Olzmann is the author of two collections of poems, Mezzanines , which was selected for the 2011 Kundiman Prize, and Contradictions in the Design . His third book, Constellation Route , is forthcoming from Alice James Books in January 2022. A recipient of fellowships from the Kundiman Retreat for Asian American Writers, MacDowell, and the Kresge Arts Foundation, Olzmann's work has appeared in Best American Poetry, Pushcart Prize XLV, Kenyon Review, New England Review, Southern Revie w, and elsewhere. He teaches at Dartmouth College where he is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing.

Since 1967, the Arts Endowment has awarded more than 3,600 Creative Writing Fellowships totaling over $56 million. Many American recipients of the National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and Pulitzer Prize in Poetry and Fiction were recipients of National Endowment for the Arts fellowships early in their careers.

Visit arts.gov to browse bios, artist statements, and writing excerpts from a sample of past Creative Writing Fellows.

Abonado and Williams Receive NEA Creative Writing Fellowships

The National Endowment for the Arts has announced that Bennington Writing Seminars alum Albert Abonado MFA '10 and faculty member Phillip B. Williams will receive Creative Writing Fellowships of $25,000. 

Abonado and Williams are two of 35 Literature Fellows for fiscal year 2021. The National Endowment for the Arts will award a total of $1.2 million in FY 2021 Literature Fellowships to creative writers and translators.  

T hese fellowships are in poetry and enable the recipients to set aside time for writing, research, travel, and general career advancement. Fellows are selected through a highly-competitive, anonymous process and are judged on the basis of artistic excellence of the work sample they provided. Abonado and Williams were selected from 1,601 eligible applicants. 

Albert Abonado teaches creative writing at SUNY Geneseo. In 2014, he received the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in poetry. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in  Apogee, Boston Review, Pleiades, The Literary Review, LIT, Waxwing , and others. He is also author of the e-chapbook  This is Superbook .

Phillip B. Williams is a Chicago, IL native and author of  Thief in the Interior , winner of the 2017 Kate Tufts Discovery Award and a 2017 Lambda Literary award and finalist for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literature (Poetry). He received a 2017 Whiting Award, 2013 Ruth Lilly Fellowship, and a Kenyon Review Writers Workshop fellowship. Williams is the co-editor in chief of the online journal  Vinyl . He was a visiting faculty member at Bennington for the 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 academic years and joined as faculty in Fall 2018.

"This is a moment of reflection and recalibration, and the NEA grant puts greater freedom on perfecting that art of stillness," said Phillip B. Williams .

“The National Endowment for the Arts is proud to support these 35 talented poets through Creative Writing Fellowships,” said Amy Stolls , director of literary arts at the Arts Endowment. “These fellowships often provide writers with crucial support and encouragement, and in return our nation is enriched by their artistic contributions in the years to come.”

Since 1967, the Arts Endowment has awarded more than 3,600 Creative Writing Fellowships totaling over $56 million. Many American recipients of the National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and Pulitzer Prize in Poetry and Fiction were recipients of National Endowment for the Arts fellowships early in their careers. The full list of 2021 Creative Writing Fellows is  available online .

Visit the agency’s Creative Writing Fellowships webpage to read excerpts by and features on past recipients of Literature Fellowships for translation projects and Creative Writing Fellows. For more information on literature at the National Endowment for the Arts, go to arts.gov . 

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Three MFA Alumnae Awarded NEA Creative Writing Fellowships

Alumnae LaTanya McQueen ‘06, MFA ’06, Asako Serizawa, MFA ’01, and Laura van den Berg, MFA ’08 were three of 35 authors awarded National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Creative Writing Fellowships for 2022.

The program awards grants of $25,000 to recipients to allow the time and space to create and further develop their writing projects. Fellowships alternate yearly between prose and poetry (it’s a prose year). The only judging criterion is “artistic excellence,” and every year sees new and diverse panel of judges .

Asako Serizawa is the author of the short story collection Inheritors (Doubleday, 2020), which won both the PEN/Open Book Award and the Story Prize Spotlight Award, earned Massachusetts Book Awards Honors , and was long listed for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award , and two O. Henry Prizes.

Serizawa was granted previous fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, the MacDowell Colony, and the Civitella Ranieri Foundation. Born in Japan and raised in Singapore, Jakarta, and Tokyo, she moved to the United States for college, where she earned degrees from Tufts and Brown universities, as well as Emerson.

Serizawa is currently working on a loose tetralogy of works about Japanese imperialism and World War II, of which Inheritors was the first, according to her personal statement, published on the NEA website.

 “For myriad reasons, common and specific, my first book took over 12 years to write; at the frontier of the second book – a novel very much in its nascent phases – time, an old presence, is revealing a new face,” Serizawa wrote in her personal statement . “I’m full of gratitude for this fellowship; for its existence as an option; for the research and travel it will grant. Its arrival was utterly unexpected and propitious, bolstering the first passages forward.”

LaTanya McQueen is the author of a novel, When the Reckoning Comes (Harper Perennial, 2021) and an essay collection, And It Begins Like This (Black Lawrence Pres, 2017). She was the 2017-2018 Robert P. Dana Emerging Writer Fellow at Cornell College, and received her PhD from the University of Missouri.

Her work has been published in New Ohio Review, the Arkansas International, the Florida Review, New Orleans Review, Ninth Letter, the North American Review, Fourteen Hills, Passages North, Black Warrior Review, Bennington Review, West Branch, TriQuarterly , and Pleaides.

According to her personal statement , she dedicates her craft to her mother.

“While my mother died long before I could ever show her the path I’d managed to carve out for myself, I still think of her with everything that I write. My mother lived a life of invisibility. I write for her, for other women like her, and for women like me—those who’ve felt invisible their whole lives, not counted, never seen,” McQueen writes.

“This award will let me continue to do this work, but for the first time in my entire life, I can do it with a little bit of freedom, and that means the world.”

Laura van den Berg has previously received awards from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, the Guggenheim Foundation, Civitella Ranieri Foundation, and theMacDowell Colony. She is the author of five works of fiction, including The Third Hotel (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018), a finalist for the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, and I Hold a Wolf by the Ears (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020), which Time Magazine named one of the “10 Best Fiction Books of 2020.”

She is currently working on a novel titled Florida Diary , where she explores the process of returning to her childhood home in Central Florida, in the onset of the pandemic.

“The blank page is a constant in the lives of writers. No matter where we are in our practice it never gets any easier – for me at least – to confront. All the unknowns, the impossibility of knowing what is really out there until you’re, well,  there . This powerful dose of encouragement arrived at a time when the scope of this project was feeling especially daunting,” she writes .

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Alumnus earns nea fellowship through poetry.

The list of 35 professionals receiving a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Creative Writing Fellowship this year has a distinct Kalamazoo College flavor.

In addition to Department of English Assistant Professor Oliver Baez Bendorf , poet and K alumnus Aaron Coleman ’09 was chosen from more than 1,600 writers for a fellowship worth $25,000.

“It’s something that I’ve dreamed about for a long time because of the folks who have stepped along this path before,” Coleman said, while mentioning writers such as Professor Emeritus Diane Seuss and her mentor, Conrad Hilberry . “I also think of it at the most practical level. I know that this is going to help me create the next book project in ways that I know wouldn’t be possible otherwise.”

Coleman, who soon will earn a Ph.D. from Washington University in St. Louis, might be known most widely for his 2018 published poetry collection titled Threat Come Close . That collection helped him earn the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award for Poetry in 2020. The recognition means Coleman will visit GLCA member institutions, including K this spring, where he will give readings, meet with students and faculty members, and discuss his techniques and creativity in the writing process.

That writing process was greatly inspired by K faculty and the lessons he learned at the College.

“I do know I brought to K the seed kernel that developed into my deep love, appreciation and sort of wonder for the roles that language plays in our lives,” Coleman said. “But during the time I was there, Diane Seuss was really someone who helped me gain confidence and trust that what I had to say was valuable, and that with a lot of work and learning about the tradition of poetry and the technique of revision that I could find a way to write and keep poetry at the center of my life.”

The recognition from the NEA means Coleman will have new opportunities to pursue his own writing, including his next as-of-now untitled project.

“I’m calling my next poetry collection a multi-generational chorus of poems, because of the way that they speak to the lives and experiences of my family over the course of generations, based on both research and family stories,” Coleman said.

The first poem from that collection, titled “Another Strange Land: Downpour off Cape Hatteras (March, 1864),” tells the story of Coleman’s great-great-great-grandfather and is already published on the Academy of American Poets website .

“One of my cousins from Pennsylvania found his tombstone,” Coleman said. “Its engravement said he was a part of the Pennsylvania 25th Colored Infantry, and I realized that he had fought in the Civil War. So that sent me scouring through military records trying to figure out where his unit was at different times, and that kind of blend of imagination and research is at the crux of this next collection.”

Coleman is also currently translating a poetry book titled El Gran Zoo , by Afro-Cuban poet Nicolás Guillén. Guillen’s poetry draws on disturbing realities to create a zoo of natural and humanmade wonders alongside a wealth of social and political issues.

In a news release regarding the fellowships, the NEA credits its fellowship honorees as writers who will enrich the world with their artistic contributions for years to come, an idea that helps Coleman feel he’s successful.

“Art and poetry are a unique realm for understanding our emotions and identities,” Coleman said. “It’s a space where we can figure out ways to say things we have no other way to say. Success as a poet, for me, comes from just the investment in the lifelong apprenticeship of writing. It’s in trying to grow as a poet and then seeing that reflected in the world. When people tell me my work matters to them and that it’s valuable to their own journey, that’s what feels like success to me.”

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NEA Announces Over $33 Million in Project Funding for the Arts Nationwide

National Endowment for the Arts Announces Over $33 Million in Project Funding to Arts Organizations Nationwide

Washington, DC— The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is pleased to announce the first round of recommended awards for fiscal year 2022, with 1,498 awards totaling nearly $33.2 million. Grants for Arts Projects funding spans 15 artistic disciplines and reaches communities in every state, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. Recipients of the Challenge America grant program, NEA Literature Fellowships in creative writing and translation, and support for arts research projects are also included in this announcement.

“These National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) grants underscore the resilience of our nation’s artists and arts organizations, will support efforts to provide access to the arts, and rebuild the creative economy,” said NEA Acting Chair Ann Eilers. “The supported projects demonstrate how the arts are a source of strength and well-being for communities and individuals, and can open doors to conversations that address complex issues of our time.”

• View a state-by-state listing of the grants announced in this release.
• View a listing of awards by discipline / grant category
• List of the panelists who reviewed these applications for funding

The NEA is committed to equity, access, and fostering mutual respect for the diverse beliefs and values of all individuals and groups. Applications for funding demonstrated a commitment by the arts and culture sector to provide more equitable and accessible pathways for arts engagement.

Grants for Arts Projects

Grants for Arts Projects (GAP) awards reach communities in all parts of the country, large and small, and with diverse cultural and economic backgrounds. There are 1,248 organizations recommended to receive cost share/matching grants ranging from $10,000 to $100,000 for a total of $28,840,000. These awards represent 15 artistic disciplines/fields: Artist Communities, Arts Education, Dance, Design, Folk & Traditional Arts, Literary Arts, Local Arts Agencies, Media Arts, Museums, Music, Musical Theater, Opera, Presenting & Multidisciplinary Works, Theater, and Visual Arts. Applications were received in February 2021 from 1,879 eligible organizations requesting more than $92 million in support.

A sample of Grants for Arts Projects from this round of funding includes:

• A $25,000 award to the Alabama Dance Council in Birmingham, Alabama, to support the Alabama Dance Festival, now in its 25th year. Engaging with a broad audience in the southeastern United States, the festival will include residencies, a concert featuring Southern choreographers, showcases of regional dance companies, dance classes, and screenings of dance films.
• A $25,000 award to the Forest County Potawatomi Community (FCPC) in Crandon, Wisconsin, to support a multidisciplinary arts education program incorporating cultural arts, visual arts, and wood-working for underrepresented Native American youth living on or near the FCPC reservation.
• A $20,000 award to Maine Fiberarts in Topsham, Maine, to support a fiber arts exhibition and archival research project that documents the evolution of fiber arts in Maine during the last 50 years. The project will create a record of the history of textile arts and the important contributions of Maine artists.  
• A $20,000 award to the Trinity Park Conservancy in Dallas, Texas, to lead arts programming and community engagement activities to inform the transformation of a former state jail into a community space for healing.
• A $15,000 award to West Point Fellowship (West Point School of Music) in Chicago, Illinois, to support a professional steel drum orchestra and a steel drum shop to make, maintain, and repair this World Heritage instrument. A new NEA applicant with a focus on Black youth and heritage, the organization will build creative capacity in Chicago's most disadvantaged neighborhoods.

The next Grants for Arts Projects application deadlines are Thursday, February 10, 2022 , and Thursday, July 7, 2022 . Visit arts.gov for guidelines and application resources and register for a Grants for Arts Projects guidelines webinar on Wednesday, January 12, 2022, from 3:00–4:00 p.m.

Challenge America

Challenge America grants offer support primarily to small and mid-sized organizations for projects that extend the reach of the arts to populations that have limited access to the arts due to geography, ethnicity, economics, or disability. There are 168 organizations recommended in this funding category for a total of $1,680,000. Each grant is for $10,000 and requires a minimum $10,000 cost share/match. A few examples of Challenge America funding from this round include:

• The Biscayne Nature Center in Key Biscayne, Florida, will offer an arts education program for youth, primarily serving Black and Latinx schoolchildren from low-income communities in Miami-Dade County (the term Latinx is used to be inclusive/gender-free) . A teaching artist and naturalist staff will work together to lead students in the creation of artwork that uses natural or recycled materials.
• The Glacier Symphony and Chorale in Kalispell, Montana, will be touring the rural communities and tribal lands of northwest Montana, including communities and school districts where access to classical music has been limited or absent. Engagement activities will include educational materials, instrument demonstrations, question-and-answer sessions, and after-concert activities for young people.
• Orquesta Northwest in Seattle, Washington, will offer a series of arts and culture events honoring the work of Latinx COVID-19 essential workers. Free programming will include presentations by Latinx community leaders, performances by guest artists, interviews, and videos highlighting the contributions of local essential workers.
• The Taubman Museum of Art in Roanoke, Virginia, will support the development of a therapeutic art program that serves individuals with disabilities by providing access to creative arts therapies and evidence-based programs in the arts and health.

The next Challenge America application deadline is Thursday, April 21, 2022 . Visit arts.gov for guidelines and application resources and register for a Challenge America guidelines webinar on Tuesday, March 1, 2022, from 3:00–4:00 p.m.

Literature Fellowships

The National Endowment for the Arts will award $1.2 million in FY 2021 Literature Fellowships to creative writers and translators:

This includes 35 Creative Writing Fellowships of $25,000 each. These FY 2022 fellowships are in prose and enable the recipients to set aside time for writing, research, travel, and general career development.

The NEA approved fellowships to 24 translators ranging from $10,000 to $20,000 to translate works from 16 languages and 18 countries into English.

Learn more about these fellowships. The next deadline for Creative Writing Fellowships is Thursday, March 10, 2022 . In 2022, the NEA is accepting applications in poetry.

Research Awards

The National Endowment for the Arts offers two funding opportunities to support arts research projects:

Through Research Grants in the Arts , 18 organizations are recommended for a total of $815,000. This program funds research studies that analyze the value and/or impact of the arts.

Five NEA Research Labs are recommended for funding totaling $648,784. Transdisciplinary research partnerships grounded in the social and behavioral sciences will examine and report on the benefit of the arts in non-arts sectors.

Learn more about these recommended arts research awards . The next Research Awards application deadline is Tuesday, March 29, 2022. Guidelines and application resources will be posted soon at arts.gov . Register for a Research guidelines webinar on February 9, 2022, at 2:00 p.m.

All of the recommended grants in this announcement were evaluated through the agency’s panel review process. First, applications are submitted for consideration to the agency and staff review them for eligibility and completeness. A panel of experts with knowledge and experience in their respective field then review and score each application in accordance with the published review criteria. Recommendations are then made to the National Council on the Arts. The council makes recommendations to the chair, who makes the final decision on all grant awards. The NEA assembles diverse panels every year with regard to geography, race and ethnicity, and artistic points of view. Learn more about the grant review process or volunteer to be a panelist .  

Please note, there may be a delay in the distribution of some grant awards as the NEA and all of the federal government are operating under a continuing budget resolution which currently expires on February 18, 2022. 

The NEA is also providing separate grants through the American Rescue Plan (ARP) which provide funding to the arts sector for rebuilding and recovery due to COVID-19. Funding to regional, state, and local arts agencies was announced last year. The next round of ARP funding for arts organizations will be announced later in January 2022. More information on the NEA’s American Rescue Plan funding is available on arts.gov .

About the National Endowment for the Arts

Established by Congress in 1965, the National Endowment for the Arts is the independent federal agency whose funding and support gives Americans the opportunity to participate in the arts, exercise their imaginations, and develop their creative capacities. Through partnerships with state arts agencies, local leaders, other federal agencies, and the philanthropic sector, the Arts Endowment supports arts learning, affirms and celebrates America’s rich and diverse cultural heritage, and extends its work to promote equal access to the arts in every community across America. To learn more, visit arts.gov or follow us on Twitter , Facebook , Instagram , and YouTube .

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Grant Details

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Summary summary</span>information that will help an interested grantseeker determine if this program may fund their project" class="tipthis" src="https://www.dltgrants.info/icons/sigma/about_16x16_standard.png" style="border-width:0px;cursor: pointer; position: relative; top: 3px;" />.

The National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowships program offers 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. Applications are reviewed through an anonymous process in which the criteria for review are the artistic excellence and artistic merit of the submitted manuscript. Through this program, the Arts Endowment seeks to sustain and nurture a diverse range of creative writers at various stages of their careers and to continue to expand the portfolio of American art.

The program operates on a two-year cycle with fellowships in prose and poetry available in alternating years. For FY 2022, which is covered by these guidelines, fellowships in prose (fiction and nonfiction) are available. Fellowships in poetry will be offered in FY 2023 and guidelines will be available in January 2022. You may apply only once each year.

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A list of previous Creative Writing Fellows is available here: https://www.arts.gov/impact/literary-arts/creative-writing-fellows

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Fellowship funds are not to be used for:

• Individuals who previously have received two or more Literature Fellowships (in poetry or prose) or Translation Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts.
• Individuals who have received any Literature Fellowship (in poetry or prose) or Translation Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts on or after January 1, 2013.
• News reporting.
• Scholarly writing. (Writers who are engaged in scholarly work may wish to contact the National Endowment for the Humanities.)
• Work toward academic degrees.

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Nea web manager, creative writing staff.

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You are eligible to apply in Prose if you meet the following requirements:

• You are a citizen or permanent resident of the United States.
• You have not received two or more Fellowships (in poetry, prose, or translation) from the National Endowment for the Arts. If you have received any award from the National Endowment for the Arts, you must have submitted acceptable Final Reports to the Arts Endowment by their due date(s).
• You have not received any National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship (in poetry or prose) or Translation Fellowship on or after January 1, 2013 (FY 2013).
• This is your only application to the Arts Endowment for FY 2022 individual support. You may not apply for both a Literature Fellowship under this deadline and a Translation Project under the January 13, 2021 deadline.
• At least five (5) different short stories, works of short fiction, excerpts from novels or memoirs, or creative essays (or any combination thereof) in two or more literary magazines, journals, anthologies, or publications that regularly include fiction and/or creative nonfiction as a portion of their content; or
• A novel or novella; or
• A volume of short fiction or a collection of short stories; or
• A volume of creative nonfiction.

To qualify, work must have been published for the first time with an eligible publisher between these dates, not only reprinted or reissued in another format during this period. Publishers are eligible if they have a stated marketing and distribution policy; publish work with competitive selection and a stated editorial policy; and offer professional editing.

You may use digital, audio, or online publications to establish eligibility, provided that the publisher has a competitive selection process and stated editorial policy. If the online publication or website no longer exists, you must provide, upon request, sufficient evidence that your work once appeared online. If sufficient evidence cannot be provided, the online publication will not be eligible.

Deadline Details Deadline Details</span>Important time frames associated with the program such as submission schedules and deadlines for letters of intent to apply" class="TipThis" src="https://www.dltgrants.info/icons/Sigma/About_16x16_Standard.png" style="border-width:0px;cursor: pointer; position: relative; top: 3px;" />

Applications are to be submitted by March 10, 2021 via  www.grants.gov . A similar deadline is expected, annually.

NEA strongly recommends that you submit your application no later than March 1, 2021 to give yourself ample time to resolve any problems you might encounter.

Award Details Award Details</span>Further information about awards through this program, such as total program funding, maximum, minimum, average or range of award amounts, expected number of awards, and funding period" class="TipThis" src="https://www.dltgrants.info/icons/Sigma/About_16x16_Standard.png" style="border-width:0px;cursor: pointer; position: relative; top: 3px;" />

Fellowships are for $25,000. Awards may last up to two years. Cost sharing/matching is not required. Competition for fellowships is extremely rigorous. NEA typically receives more than 1,600 applications each year in this category and award fellowships to fewer than 3% of applicants.

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Meet the Creative Writing Fellows

Browse bios, artist statements, and writing excerpts from a sample of Literature Fellows in Creative Writing (2001 – present) for a snapshot of where they were in their writing careers when they received their awards.

The Arts Endowment awards fellowships in poetry in odd years and in prose in even years. 

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