- Campuses :
- Twin Cities
- Crookston
- Duluth
- Morris
- Rochester
- Other Locations
***Note to MFA students: Samples of successful application letters to the creative writing awards are accessible through your umn email. If you look in your Google Docs after logging in to your account, you should see that the files have been shared with you.
ArtWords: Writing at the Weisman. CLOSED
Deadline: March 9, 4 pm, submissions due online to WAM: http://weisman.umn.edu/forms#artwords
Eligibility: Undergraduate and graduate students enrolled at the University of Minnesota fall 2011 or spring 2012.
Readers: Local writers, Weisman staff.
Criteria: Visit artwork in the permanent collection at the Weisman Museum and write a one-page prose piece or poem in response to the work.
Åpplication: Online through WAM. Winners announced in early April. Public reading April 18, 7 pm. Three winners in the graduate category; three in the undergraduate category. Winners receive gift certificates to the Weisman Museum Store.
Scribe for Human Rights Fellowship (MFA only) CLOSED
Deadline: March 2,2012
Award: $4000 stipend
Eligibility: First- and second-year MFA students.
Description: We invite current first year and second year Creative Writing MFA students to submit applications for a 10-week Scribes for Human Rights Fellowship for summer 2012. The Scribe will work as a writer-in-residence with the Human Rights Program at the University of Minnesota. The $4,000 fellowship will support an MFA student to design and undertake a short writing project related to human rights. An additional $1,000 will support travel for research or conference presentations. In addition to this project, the Scribe will assist in organizing one human rights literary event for the summer or fall, and will contribute to the written publications of the Human Rights Program. The internship runs for ten weeks any time between May 15 and August 31, 2012. Office space for the Scribe is available at the Human Rights Program in 232 Social Sciences Building. Interested applicants should send a cover letter and CV as email attachments to Kathleen Glasgow who will forward the materials to Barbara Frey, Director of the Human Rights Program, and Patricia Hampl, Regents Professor in the Department of English, by noon Friday, March 2, 2012. Please include in your cover letter a proposed project related to human rights that you intend to carry out during the 2012 summer. The Scribe will be announced in early April. http://hrp.cla.umn.edu/projresearch/shr.html
Dates: Ten weeks in summer 2012.
Application: Interested applicants should send a cover letter and CV as email attachments to Kathleen Glasgow, Coordinator of Creative Writing. Please include in your cover letter a proposed project related to human rights.
Readers: Barbara Frey, Director of the Human Rights Program; Patricia Hampl, Regents Professor in the Department of English.
The 2012 recipient of the Scribe for Human Rights Fellowship is Kate Johnston. Her project concerns Somali refugees in the Twin Cities and solitary confinement in Minnesota prisons. She plans to organize a round-table with local nonfiction writers, student and faculty to address human rights abuses in Minnesota.
Marcella DeBourg Fellowship (MFAs, PhDs, MAs) CLOSED
Deadline: March 9, 2012 Creative Writing Program Office
Award: Two graduate awards of $1700 each.
Eligibility: First and second-year MFAs; PhDs and MAs not in the final year of their program.
Criteria: Quality of writing; project that seeks to “give creative expression to women’s lives.”
Application: One-page letter of application concerning your writing/project; cover sheet with name, title of work(s). Writing sample of 4-5 poems or 15-25 pages of prose (creative or academic).
Readers: Siobhan Craig and Ray Gonzalez
The 2012 recipient of the Marcella DeBourg Fellowships are Elisabeth Workman and Victoria Scher. Victoria is completing a series of essays under the title "A Race in the Desert." The essays concern Raramuri women in Oasis, a government-funded settlement in Chihuahua City, Mexico. Elisabeth is creating a body of poems intersecting satirical gestures of mockery, hyperbole, and irreverence.
Gesell Summer Writing Fellowships (MFAs only) CLOSED
Deadline: April 2, 2012, Creative Writing Program Office
Award: Two 2-week residencies at the Anderson Center in Red Wing, Minnesota: July 1-15 and July 16-31, 2012. http://andersoncenter.org
Eligibility: Currently enrolled graduate students in the MFA Program.
Criteria: Letter of application; progress toward degree.
Readers: Creative Writing Faculty
Application: One-page description of the project you will pursue during the two-week residency and an idea of the form of community service you might wish to contribute while at Anderson, submitted with a CV.
Michael Dennis Browne Fellowship in Poetry (MFAs only)
An annual award in poetry for a first- or second-year poet who shows exceptional potential in the field. Selected by Creative Writing Faculty in spring 2012. An award stipend for summer 2012. There is no application process. This award will be announced March 5, 2012. The recipient of the Michael Dennis Browne Fellowship is not eligible to apply for the Graduate Research Partnership Program or the CLA Fellowship.
The 2012 recipient of the Michael Dennis Browne Fellowship is J. Fossenbell.
CLA Fellowships for Research/Travel CLOSED
Deadline: April 5, Creative Writing Program Office
Stipend: Three awards of $1033.00 each
Description: CLA Research/Travel Fellowships encourage graduate students in the Creative Writing Program to spend the summer researching and or/ traveling for work and writing related to the thesis. Recipients will be reimbursed for airfare, ground travel (gas, car rental, taxi), and lodging. These funds must be spent by the end of August, 2012.
Eligibility: First- and -second year students in the MFA program are eligible to apply. Students are ineligible if they have incompletes in official program coursework from a prior term on their transcript. You must be a currently enrolled student in the MFA program at the time of application. Recipients of the Michael Dennis Browne Fellowship are not eligible for this award.
Review: Review of applications will be conducted by members of the Creative Writing Faculty and announced in April 2012.
Selection criterion: Quality and significance of travel/research project proposed; value of experience to the graduate student's thesis developement.
Applications: Write a one-page single-spaced letter in which you explain your intended use of the funds and the way(s) in which your project will further the writing and completion of your thesis. projects will be evaluated according to the originality of he intended summer project, its value to the student's creative process, and its relationship to the student's larger body of work. Travel may, but does not have to be, involved in the project.
Graduate Research Partnership Program (GRPP) CLOSED
Deadline: April 5, Creative Writing Program Office
Stipend: Two awards of $4000
Description: The CLA Graduate Research Partnership Program (GRPP) encourages graduate students enrolled in graduate programs housed within the college to partner with a College of Liberal Arts (CLA) faculty project advisor on projects of shared interest. The program provides GRPP Fellows with a summer research stipend of $4000 for summer 2012. GRPP Fellows must be enrolled students in a graduate program housed in CLA.
Eligibility: First- and second-year students in the MFA program are eligible to apply. Students are ineligible if they have incompletes in official program coursework from a prior term on their transcript. CLA GRPP Fellows may not hold summer appointments in excess of .25 FTE. Students receiving other University of Minnesota fellowships, including department fellowships (the MDB Fellowship) are not eligible for this fellowship. Please ask Kathleen Glasgow (kglasgow (at) umn (dot) edu, if you have eligibility questions). Students may not register for courses, except during May term, while they hold a CLA GRPP Fellowship. Past recipients of the GRPP are ineligible.
Review: Review of applications will be conducted by members of the Creative Writing Faculty. Recipients announced in April, 2012.
Selection criterion: Quality and significance of the scholarship or creative work proposed; value of experience to the graduate student’s academic development; value of fellowship for the scholarly/creative achievement of the project; evidence that the student is making timely progress toward degree. http://cla.umn.edu/departments/gradGrppGuide.php
Application: Applications must be submitted by a graduate student currently enrolled in a graduate program in the College of Liberal Arts with the endorsement of a tenured or tenure-track CLA faculty member. Application materials should include application form, project proposal, a budget proposal, a two-page CV and a U of M unofficial graduate transcript. Travel may, but does not have to be, involved in the project. http://cla.umn.edu/departments/gradGrppGuide.php
***NOTE: Application deadlines for the two awards above are simultaneous; students who win a GRPP, however, may not receive a CLA Fellowship--meaning that if your proposal happens to rise to the top of the pile in both pools, you will be awarded only a GRPP. Neither the GRPP nor the CLA Fellowship will be given on the basis of genre; awards will be given to the strongest proposals.
NOTE: If you have financial aid or an outstanding balance on your student account at the time you receive some awards, the award will first be applied to your student account. Any remaining balance will be forwarded to you.
