Updates to The Big List of Deadlines

Fellowships, grants, residencies, and events

Hi friends,

I don’t have an essay for you this week. A stomach bug took out my whole family over the weekend, and we’re all still sipping Gatorade and readjusting to sunlight after two days of watching How to Train Your Dragon and its sequel (which, honestly, highly recommend) on repeat.

As I slowly return to my inbox and to-do list, I’m not feeling very eloquent or creative. I started four different versions of this newsletter, but each topic was something I really want to spend more time on and think about with a fully functioning brain. So, instead, I pivoted to expanding The Big List of Deadlines with over a dozen new opportunities to check out in the coming months.

I hope this is a resource you can reference often for exciting new paths to funding, support, and education to further your writing. We’re all rightfully worried about funding for creative pursuits right now, as the current administration guts federal support of so many vital programs and warps the National Endowment for the Arts into a propaganda machine. (There is so much to be said about this, for which I currently lack the brain power. For now, please check out Claire Willet’s critical piece on the very disturbing changes being implemented at the NEA right now.)

That said, there are so many local, scrappy, and enterprising organizations out there that want to support your work. I will be regularly digging for them, so hopefully, you can spend less time on research and more time on your writing and applications for these things.

One more thing, before we get to upcoming deadlines and events. I had an essay published in Oregon Humanities last week that’s about pain and joy, and how we might look for the latter in the trenches of the former. I get into the mess of all that through the braided narratives of my daughter’s birth and running around the base of Mount St. Helens.

I worked on this piece for over two years, revisiting it every few months with a better understanding of what I was trying to say. I’ll share more on the evolution of this story in a future post, but for now, I hope you’ll give it a read.

Upcoming Deadlines

• Spreading Love Through the Media Grant | Apply by 2/28

• Allen Shoup Memorial Fellowship | Apply by 2/28

• Waterman Fund Alpine Essay Contest for Emerging Writers | Apply by 3/1