When when you end up with an enormous, time-consuming writing challenge to pursue, your love of phrases alone may not pay the payments. That’s when writing grants can swoop in to avoid wasting the day (and your finances).
Should you discover you get pleasure from writing grant functions, grant writing for others could be a profitable area of interest as properly.
Try these 20 writing grants
Writing grants for ladies, poets and extra
Prepared to use for cash to fund your writing? Listed below are 20 nice writing grants for creatives based mostly in the USA.
1. Leeway Basis Artwork and Change Grants
These grants of as much as $2,500 can be found to ladies and transgender artists and cultural producers based mostly in Larger Philadelphia, whose work emphasizes social change. Which means, “social change should be integral to the concepts, beliefs and targets which might be woven all through your [writing] and your course of of making and sharing your artwork,” and may positively have interaction the neighborhood.
Remember that one key to success for this grant is securing a “Change Accomplice”: a person, enterprise, or group that’s related to your work, and who will endorse your challenge.
If you’re at the very least 18 years outdated and dwell in Bucks, Camden, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery or Philadelphia counties, you’re eligible to use. Nonetheless, full-time artwork college students aren’t eligible. All genres are welcome. Functions should be acquired by the biannual deadlines, and you may solely apply as soon as per grant cycle.
Check out this page for all the main points.
2. Grants for Artist Initiatives (GAP) Awards
If you’re a resident of Washington state, 18 years or older and never at present enrolled in a graduate or undergraduate diploma program, that is the grant for you.
The Grants for Artists Undertaking (GAP) awards as much as $1,500 yearly to 50+ practising literary and visible artists. Grant cash can help the “improvement, completion or presentation of latest work.”
The group additionally connects artists to an array of companies, together with profession improvement, authorized help, residencies and persevering with training—simply to call just a few. Hold your eye out for the details here.
3. Bard Faculty Fiction Prize
This writer-in-residence award is an incredible alternative for an rising author beneath the age of 39 to commit a semester to a fiction challenge.
The recipient is required to offer one public lecture on the campus and to informally meet with Bard college students, however the remainder of the time is devoted to their writing challenge. Moreover a large $30,000 money award, the successful author additionally will get to be a author in residence at Bard Faculty for one semester.
Verify this page to find out about upcoming deadlines. The applying course of could be very easy; no prolonged FAQ pages right here.
Candidates ought to have published at least one book, three copies of which should be submitted with a canopy letter explaining their subsequent challenge and their C.V.
4. Arts Writers Grant Program
If up to date visible artwork is your writing space of experience, you’re in luck. This writing grant funds writers who’re passionate and educated about up to date artwork and whose work will broaden the humanities writing viewers.
Each rising and established writers can apply for a grant starting from $15,000 to $50,000 in one in every of three challenge sorts: articles, books and short-form writing. Hold your eye out for the appliance interval to reopen in Spring.
Particulars can be found here.
5. Arizona Artist Analysis and Growth Grant
Arizona writers who need to “advance their creative observe, broaden their inventive horizons and deepen the impression of their work” could need to strive their luck with this grant, which will probably be awarded to as much as 30 artists throughout all disciplines this yr. The grant’s quantity goes as much as $5,000 relying on funding.
Candidates whose initiatives emphasize the “new”—new methods, new methods, new methods of participating communities—are primed for achievement. Writers must also explicitly state of their functions how their challenge will impression not simply their very own creative practices, but in addition profit the bigger Arizona neighborhood.
The applying has quite a few demanding elements, so make sure to give your self time to delve into the rules. Learn more here.
6. Kansas Metropolis Inspiration Grant
Kansas Metropolis writers within the metropolitan space could also be awarded between $1,000 and $2,500 for skilled improvement and different budding initiatives. The regional arts council notes that the best precedence for the grant is to fund initiatives that considerably advance profession improvement or an artist’s capability to finish their work—to not fund “enterprise as typical.”
A full proposal, which incorporates as much as six samples of labor, is just submitted after an applicant passes this preliminary part.
Word that if you happen to request greater than $1,500 to your challenge, matching funds could also be required.
Try the Inspiration Resources web page for extra data.
7. RISCA Undertaking Grant Initiatives for People
As with most different state arts council-based grants, this Rhode Island grant is on the market to writers who finally plan to share their work with the general public via a studying, efficiency or one other open occasion. The emphasis on public worth is robust with the RI Arts Council, so this grant will greatest serve socially-minded writing initiatives.
Particular person candidates can request as much as $3,000, however be conscious that grants could also be solely partially funded. In case your request is very sizeable you may contemplate offering proof that different organizations or people have financially invested in your challenge.
Discover software particulars here.
8. North Carolina Artist Help Grant
North Carolina writers at any stage of their careers are invited to use for writing grants to fund new or current initiatives, with statewide awards starting from $300 to $5,000. (Grant quantities fluctuate by area.)
Software procedures and deadlines fluctuate relying in your county, so ensure you attain out to the workplace designated on this page for particular regional particulars. The rules are pretty open-ended, which is nice information for writers who need to use the funds for a wide range of skilled improvement wants.
9. Superior Basis Grant
This grant is as superior because it sounds.
Winners obtain $1,000 with “no strings hooked up” to pursue their unimaginable initiatives, and the muse and its donors don’t have any say within the completed challenge.
Chapters of the muse organized by area or topic evaluation functions and choose the grantees. The method is nearly unsettlingly easy, however don’t be deterred—this actually is a superb alternative.
Check the website for particular details about the appliance necessities and deadlines to your chapter.
10. The Regional Arts Fee’s Artist Help Grant
This grant, funded by the Regional Arts Fee, offers “direct funds for a person artist’s initiatives, wants, or inventive alternatives in all creative disciplines.” The grant ranges from $500 to $3,000 and can be utilized for challenge completion, convention charges, rental house, supplies, and another assets that contribute to an artists’ improvement.
You’ll be eligible for this grant if you happen to’re 19 years or older, a resident of St. Louis Metropolis or County and have been for at the very least one yr, and if you happen to’ve created and offered or carried out authentic work to the general public.
11. PEN/Phyllis Naylor Working Author Fellowship
Since 2001, this annual writing grant of $5,000 has been awarded to an writer of youngsters’s or YA fiction. “It has been developed to assist writers whose work is of excessive literary caliber and help a author at a vital second of their profession to finish a novel-in-progress.”
To make sure complete impartiality of the judging course of, your submitted novel-in-progress will probably be judged blindly, so make sure to not put your identify wherever in your manuscript.
Amongst different necessities, eligible candidates ought to have printed at the very least one youngsters’s or YA fiction novel, and it should have been printed by a U.S. commerce writer.
Check out the website for more details.
12. Karen and Philip Cushman Late Bloomer Award
Should you’re a author over the age of fifty and your work has but to be historically printed within the youngsters’s literature discipline, this one is all yours.
Karen and Philip Cushman and the Society of Youngsters’s Guide Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) established this grant for writers in 2013. Cushman thought-about herself a late bloomer, as her first youngsters’s guide wasn’t printed till she was 53. This grant is supposed to have fun and encourage writers similar to her.
Recipients obtain $500 and free tuition to an SCBWI convention wherever on the planet. Plus, the requirements are a breeze: you should be a member of SCBWI and an unpublished author of fifty years of age or older. Submissions re-open every year on March 1.
13. Massachusetts Artist Fellowship
Artists in Massachusetts specializing in varied disciplines can apply to obtain a $1,500 award, funded by the Mass Cultural Council, which considers “the work of particular person artists to be a vital a part of our important communities.”
The fellowship is just open to artists who’re 18 years or older and have been a resident of Massachusetts for at the very least two years. You have to even be ready to current authentic work; no interpretations or translations, please.
Though this system has a rolling software course of, please notice all new applications for Cultural District designation are paused till FY26 as program is internally reviewed and redesigned.
14. C.D. Wright Prize for Poetry
In honor of C.D. Wright’s legacy, The Arkansas International seeks “to award progressive poetry that ‘lives freely and variously and absolutely engaged with others and the world.’”
Any poet writing in English is eligible to submit, as long as they haven’t but printed a primary guide. U.S. citizenship just isn’t a restriction of eligibility. The winner receives $1000 and publication within the Arkansas Worldwide. Latest judges have included Hanif Abdurraqib and Shane McCrae.
Submissions open yearly initially of June and shut on the finish of August.
15. The George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Basis Fellowship
If it’s worthwhile to put aside a while to focus in your writing, this chance may be what you’re in search of.
Administered by Brown College, this fellowship was created with the intention to “present artists, students, and writers with time to finish their work.” Earlier fellowships awarded $35,000 to 9 mid-career people within the fields of Artistic Nonfiction and Historical past.
You’ll be eligible if you happen to’ve achieved recognition for one main challenge, and if you happen to can reply “sure” to these questions.
Check out the website for more information.
16. The Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence
This award is “nationally acknowledged in its position of enhancing the visibility of rising African-American fiction writers whereas additionally increasing the viewers for this literature.” The $15,000 money prize will help the author as he/she focuses on writing.
To be eligible, you’ll must be an African-American U.S. citizen with a broadcast work of fiction, and try to be prepared to attend the award ceremony in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Throughout your keep, participation in neighborhood engagement and academic outreach actions are additionally anticipated.
17. Artists 360
Designed to raise larger Northwest Arkansas artists, Artists 360 offers $7,500 grants “to help inventive initiatives, studying alternatives to develop entrepreneurship abilities and construct sustainable inventive practices, and connections to a dynamic regional artist community.” The 4 creative disciplines accepted are visible arts, performing arts, literary arts and conventional arts.
To be eligible, be an artist with an energetic and present creative observe, have specialised coaching in your discipline, and present you’ve succeeded within the arts via high-quality work and/or contributions to the sphere.
Discover more details here.
18. Saratoga Arts Particular person Artist Grants
Writers within the upstate New York State area—Fulton, Montgomery or Saratoga counties, particularly—this grant is for you. Funded by the Saratoga Arts, the Artist Grant focuses on particular person artist work to reinforce profession improvement, abilities and broaden publicity, “whereas fostering inventive, resourceful and galvanizing connections between artists and a neighborhood.”
Grants of $2,500 will probably be awarded to artists to create new work and share their inventive course of with the neighborhood. Funding can help art-related provides and supplies wanted for the execution of this system, artist charges and different outreach prices.
19. Independently Printed Pre-publication Grant
You should be a present SCBWI member when your work is submitted and when the award is introduced.
Cash from the grant should be used to self-publish your guide, together with however not restricted to:
- Hiring illustrators
- Hiring content material editors, proofreaders, and copyeditors
- Hiring guide designers
- Guide trailers
- Web site improvement
- Printing and transport prices
- Publishing software program
Grants will probably be awarded based mostly on:
- High quality and professionalism of your synopsis
- Power of your marketing strategy
Check out the website for more information.
20. Work-in-Progress Awards
To help youngsters’s guide writers and illustrators within the completion of a particular challenge at present not beneath contract. Given within the classes of Image Guide Textual content, Chapter Books/Early Readers, Center Grade, Younger Grownup Fiction, Nonfiction, and Underrepresented Fiction or Nonfiction.
The SCBWI Work-In-Progress (WIP) Award assists youngsters’s guide writers and illustrators within the publication of a particular challenge at present not beneath contract. One winner per class will probably be chosen. SCBWI reserves the precise to not confer this award in any given yr.
Submissions open March 1 via March 31. Learn more here.
Searching for extra nice writing grants and funding choices? Try C. Hope Clark’s improbable record of alternatives at Funds for Writers.
The unique model of this story on writing grants was by Kristen Pope. We replace this publish often so it’s extra helpful for our readers.
Photograph by way of Tero Vesalainen / Shutterstock
