Ten Prairie Schooner Contributors Awarded NEA Fellowships

The art world is bustling with news and excitement since the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) announced the recipients of its 2015 grant funding. The NEA has awarded thirty-six Creative Writing Fellowships in Poetry, selecting the recipients from among 1,634 eligible manuscripts received, a record number. The fellowship allows recipients to use their time for writing, research, travel, and career advancement.

Here at Prairie Schooner, we’re thrilled to see some familiar names, including ten of our past contributors. You read that right: a quarter of this year’s recipients have also graced our pages, and we couldn’t be more excited for them!  We want to give a big shout-out and hearty congrats to past contributors who received the fellowship: Sara Gelston (who was just published in our Fall 2014 issue), Tung-Hui Hu, Ellen Bass (read her poem “When You Bring in the Paper” from fall 2012 here), Amy Beeder, Jennifer Givhan, Jessica Greenbaum, Barbara Duffey, Kerry James Evans, Christopher Kempf, and Susan Firer (read her poem “My Older Sister Ate Bones” from Winter 1996 here).

The NEA, which was established by Congress in 1965, “supports artistic excellence, creativity, and innovation for the benefit of individuals and communities.”  The agency operates independently of the federal government and, to date, has awarded over $5 billion in grants to reinforce the importance of the arts in the United States. For those who aren’t familiar with the award, the Creative Writing Fellowship is a $25,000 non-matching, competitive fellowship.  This will be the 47th year of the NEA supporting individual writers with Creative Writing Fellowships in Poetry.

To view a complete list of the recipients, visit arts.gov.  Congratulations to all of the recipients and keep up the exemplary work!