20 Writing Fellowships for Authors, Journalists and Poets

If you’re keen to focus on a long-term writing project, but you aren’t sure how to fund your work, writing fellowships may provide the support you need.

Writing fellowships usually consist of funding and space for writers to focus on a creative project rather than the business of supporting themselves. 

From writing fellowships for new writers to creative writing fellowships, there are plenty of different types for any kind of creative who is looking for a chance to let their projects thrive.

Many writing fellowships require residency in a particular city for the duration of the fellowship, while others fund international travel—but all provide financial support that enables their recipients to fully dedicate their time to writing.

The world of writing fellowships can be dizzying, but we’ve sifted through the options and found some of the best for poets, fiction writers, nonfiction writers and journalists alike.

The opportunities here run the gamut from fellowships for established writers to launching pads for those at the beginning of their careers. Each fellowship on the list is an annual contest, so if this year’s deadline has passed, you’ll have lots of time to prepare for next year.

20 writing fellowships for authors, journalists and poets

Wherever you are in your writing career, you’re bound to find a tempting option or two on this list of writing fellowships that could help you pursue your next project.

1. Steinbeck Fellow Program of San José State University

If you’re up for a year in San José and need funding to focus on your work of fiction, creative nonfiction, drama or biography, this is a fantastic opportunity. 

Named the Steinbeck Fellow Program in honor of John Steinbeck, this $15,000 fellowship allows writers to spend a year working on their manuscript while benefiting from the faculty and graduate-student community at SJSU.

The fellowship is designed for writers who have had “some success, but have not published extensively.” It requires a one- to three-page proposal, including a timeline, three letters of recommendation, a resume and a writing sample under 25 pages.

Deadline: Applications are usually due in early January.

2. Mother Jones Ben Bagdikian Fellowship Program

Emerging journalists who want to immerse themselves in an investigative reporting environment will be hard-pressed to find a better opportunity than this. 

Based in San Francisco or Washington, D.C., Mother Jones’ editorial fellowship program is renowned for its impressive alumni list. Fellows do hands-on research and fact-checking and have opportunities to pitch online and print content.

Mother Jones offers fellows $23.52 per hour USD.  To apply, follow the guidelines posted on the website.

Deadline: The 2025-2026 fellowship cycle will begin in June 2025, and run for one year. Applications will open in the spring.

3. The Rona Jaffe Foundation Fellowship

The Rona Jaffe Foundation Fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center is awarded each year to an emerging woman writer of exceptional promise. The fellowship fully funds the seven-month residency and includes a $2,500 prize to help defray the cost of travel and living expenses.

There is also a Fellowship Access Fund for others accepted into the Writing or Visual Arts Fellowship. This is a one-time award ranging from $500 to $2,500 USD.

Deadline: The 2025-2026 Writing Fellowship deadline is December 16, 2024. The 2025-2026 Visual Arts Fellowship deadline is February 3, 2025.

4. The Kenyon Review Fellowship

Creative writers of all genres are invited to apply for the two-year KR Fellowship at Ohio’s Kenyon College. Applicants should have experience teaching literature or creative writing to undergraduate students, as they will be required to teach one semester each year in the English department while undertaking “a significant writing project.”

Additionally, fellows are expected to work on a variety of creative and editorial projects for The Kenyon Review. Fellows receive an annual salary plus benefits. Be sure to highlight your “achievement and long-term potential” in your application, and play up your teaching experience.

Deadline: In 2024, applications were due October 18. Check the website for future deadlines. 

5. Loft McKnight Artist Fellowships

Minnesota writers, this one’s for you. Five $25,000 writing fellowships are available: four in creative prose or poetry and one creative writing fellowship for a writer of children’s literature. 

If you’re just starting out, you might want to bookmark the Loft McKnight Artist Fellowship for later in your career.  To be eligible, writers must demonstrate past publication, either a book or a significant number of literary journal publications.

The funding is intended to enable its recipients to focus on their craft for the year. Your 15 to 18 page writing sample will be the bedrock of your application.

Deadline: The deadline is usually in autumn. In 2024 the deadline is November, 19. 

6. Bucknell Stadler Fellowship

The Bucknell University Humanities Center provides several fellowship and grant opportunities for both faculty and students who wish to study and work in the humanities.

The Humanities Center Faculty Research Fellowships (FRF) are intended to provide faculty in the humanities with the resources needed to support and enhance ongoing research leading to publication in peer-reviewed venues (print and/or digital). In 2024 to 2025, the fellowship provides $3,000 for research expenses. The fellowship period will be Oct. 1, 2024 through June 30, 2025.

Deadline: The Application Period for 2024-2025 is closed, but check back for future opportunities.

7. Nieman Fellowships

Perhaps the most generous award available for established journalists, the Nieman Foundation at Harvard offers writing fellowships for up to 24 journalists each year. Fellows spend two semesters at the college delving into master classes, shop talks, seminars and journalism conferences.

Most fellows receive a stipend of $75,000 over the nine months they spend at Harvard, in addition to housing, childcare and healthcare. 

This fellowship is less about making time to write and more about the chance to benefit from a community of fellow journalists and academics before you return to your professional life.

You must have five years of full-time media experience under your belt to apply. Also noteworthy: 12 of the 24 fellows will be international journalists, so non-U.S. citizens should definitely consider this opportunity.

Deadline: The deadline for international candidates is generally in early December (in 2024 the deadline is December 1), while U.S. candidates can generally apply until late January (this cycle it’s January 31, 2025).

8. James Jones First Novel Fellowship

Fiction writers wrestling with their first (unpublished) novel should take note of this fellowship. Named in honor of the “From Here to Eternity” author, the winner of the First Novel Fellowship will receive $12,000 USD.

Applicants are asked to submit an outline of their novel-in-progress, as well as the first 50 pages of their manuscript (so if your novel is still in idea form, take advantage of NaNoWriMo or a similar challenge and get cracking). If you have more than one novel in the works, you’re welcome to submit multiple manuscripts as separate entries. An entry fee of $30 is required to accompany each submission.

Deadline: Entries are accepted from October 1 of every year until midnight on March 15 of every year.

9. The Hodder Fellowship

Open to writers and visual artists (and composers, choreographers, performance artists or other kinds of artists), the Hodder Fellowship invites fellows to pursue independent projects at Princeton’s Lewis Center for the Arts during the academic year. Fellows are awarded a $92,000 stipend over the 10-month fellowship. 

The “exceptional promise” called for by the criteria should take the form of advanced degrees and previously published work, as most literary fellows have published a book prior to their fellowship year.

The Hodder is unique, as far as campus-based writer fellowship programs are concerned: Fellows are not required to teach or even interact with campus life if they don’t want to. The Lewis Center looks for writers who are at a crucial moment in their career, where they’ll greatly benefit from time away from busy lives.

Deadline: Applications are generally due in mid-September. In 2024, the deadline was September 10 at 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time.

10. Pen Center Emerging Voices Fellowship

Designed for underrepresented, marginalized writers who are isolated from the literary establishment, the Emerging Voices Fellowship fosters the careers of emerging writers through coursework, readings, Q&A sessions with prominent authors, mentorship, scholarship opportunities and a $1,500 honorarium. 

For five months in Los Angeles, Emerging Voices fellows will work on a specific writing project with a professional mentor in addition to attending organized events and classes.

Writers of fiction, creative nonfiction and poetry are invited to apply. The fellowship is not open to writers who have an undergraduate degree in English with a creative writing emphasis, or those who have completed MA or MFA creative writing programs. And if you’re already widely published or can boast an array of accolades, this isn’t the fellowship for you.

Deadline: The application period is open between January 1 and January 31. 

11. Persephone Miel Fellowship

The Persephone Miel Fellowship is a great opportunity for non-U.S. journalists who want to amplify their reporting on issues that are overlooked by the mainstream media. 

The fellow will receive a $5,000 grant 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.

Any journalists (staff writers or freelancers) outside of the U.S. who wish to report from their home country are invited to apply, especially women or journalists from developing countries.

Deadline: The deadline is typically in early March. Please visit the website for future call dates and deadlines. 

12. Wallace Stegner Fellowship

Ten talented fellows—five fiction writers and five poets—will spend two years writing at Stanford University as recipients of the Wallace Stegner Fellowship.

Fellows participate in a weekly three-hour workshop led by Stanford faculty, but have no other campus duties beyond workshop attendance.  However, it is expected that fellows will attend the numerous enriching events offered by Stanford’s creative-writing program, such as readings and lectures given by established authors.

The main goal of the fellowship is to complete or make significant progress on a manuscript. The Stegner is open to any interested writer, regardless of age or nationality, and pays a living stipend of $43,000 per academic year,  in addition to tuition and health insurance. Applicants cannot be enrolled in a degree program at the same time as their fellowship.

Deadline: The application period is usually open in autumn. In 2024, the deadline for the 2025-2027 fellowship closes November 1 at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time.

13. Patrick Henry History Fellowship

If delving into American history through your writing is your dream, this one’s for you. The Patrick Henry History Fellowship is a nine-month residency at Washington College in Chestertown, Md. and is open to both scholars and non-academic writers whose work focuses on “the history or legacy of the U.S. founding era and the nation’s founding ideas.”

Candidates should be able to demonstrate significant progress on their writing project prior to applying and should have extensive publication history under their belts. The fellowship pays $45,000 and provides health insurance, faculty privileges and a book allowance.

Deadline: The deadline for the 2025-2026 fellowship is January 15, 2025.

14. Scripps Fellowship

Budding environmental journalists will swoon for the chance to spend two semesters at the University of Colorado at Boulder’s Center for Environmental Journalism. 

In addition to undertaking an independent study which should lead to “a significant piece of journalistic work,” recipients of the Scripps Fellowship take at least three classes each semester in environmental science, law and policy, and participate in relevant field trips around Denver, Boulder and beyond.

Fellows receive $80,000 for the academic year. Five writing fellowships are awarded each year, and the fellowship is open to any U.S. citizen with five years of professional journalism experience under their belt, even if they have never reported on the environment.

Deadline: The application deadline is March 1, annually.

15. Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing Fellows

The Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing Fellowships are for applicants with an MFA or PhD in creative writing who have no published books or only one full-length collection published by the application deadline. The Institute typically internationally awards two fiction fellowships and two poetry fellowships, and one third-year MFA fellowship to a current student.

The year-long writing fellowships provide “at least” $40,000 with “generous” health benefits, and it requires fellows to teach one course per semester. 

Fellows should live near Madison, Wis., and be available to fully participate in the local writing community, give a public reading and help select the following year’s fellows.

Deadline: The application period is generally open in the winter, with a deadline set at March 1.

16. Leon Levy Center for Biography Fellowships

The Leon Levy Center for Biography (LLCB) offers several fellowships annually to fund the research and writing of outstanding biographies, including special fellowships for CUNY dissertation students writing biography, and the Sloan Fellowship to fund biographies of scientists.

Recipients spend time working on their projects, going to seminars, attending public events and being part of the community. First-time biography writers are preferred.

Deadline: Applications are typically due in early January.

17. O’Brien Fellowship in Public Service Journalism

The O’Brien Fellowship in Public Service Journalism is a nine-month fellowship focusing on journalism “with the potential to drive action and improve lives.” Applicants should have at least five years of professional experience and produce journalism regularly. 

Fellows work on public service journalism from a regional, national or international level, working from the O’Brien suite at Marquette University’s Diederich College of Communication in Milwaukee.

Funds include a $75,000 salary stipend (USD), and fellows can tap into generous allotments for housing, although they also take remote or partially-remote applications in addition to full-residency applications.

Deadline: Applications typically open in December, with the deadline in January.

18. National Endowment for the Arts

Operating on a two-year cycle, Creative Writing Fellowships in prose and poetry are available for writers at various career stages in alternating years through the National Endowment for the Arts Literature. That means fellowships in prose (fiction and nonfiction) are available one year, and fellowships in poetry are offered the next. 

This competitive program offers $25,000 grants to a diverse range of published creative writers to support their efforts in writing, research, travel and other career advancement endeavors that result in the expansion of their portfolio of American art. “The criteria for review are the artistic excellence and artistic merit of the submitted manuscript,” so be sure to submit your best work.

Deadline: Applications are typically due mid-March each year (in 2024 the deadline was March 13 at 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time). Watch the website for next year’s application announcement.

19. A Public Space Writing Fellowships

A Public Space is an independent, non-profit publisher of the award-winning literary and arts magazine of the same name. The Writing Fellowship supports “early-career writers who embrace risk in their work and their own singular vision.”

This six-month writing fellowships includes editorial support from the magazine’s editors to help you prepare a piece for publication in the magazine, a $1,000 honorarium, plus the opportunity to meet agents, editors and published writers in the publishing community.

Keep in mind only writers who’ve yet to be published or contracted to write a book-length work are eligible. To apply, you’ll need a cover letter with a one-paragraph biographical statement and one previously unpublished prose piece of any word count.

Deadline: Watch the website for details on upcoming Writing Fellowships, which should be posted in December.

20. Emerging Writer Fellowship

If you’re 18 or older and you have a passion for writing, you meet the criteria to apply to the Emerging Writer Fellowship, a year-long experience created by GrubStreet creative writing center. To develop new, exciting voices and eliminate some of the financial barriers to entering the publishing world, the Emerging Writer Fellowship provides three writers tuition-free access to GrubStreet’s classes and conferences. 

Throughout the year, writers will attend seminars, multi-week courses of their choosing and conference sessions to learn more about the craft of writing and the publishing industry. Apply with a 500-word personal statement and writing samples.

Deadline: Check the website for details on upcoming Emerging Writer Fellowships, which should be posted in January.

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