As discussed in an earlier post, we are aware that the lives of some members of our alumni and faculty community have been seriously disrupted due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. 

While FOW’s first obligation is to provide scholarships, we are offering a small measure of help in the form of $500 emergency assistance grants. Four grants have been allocated in April. Thanks to generous gifts from our community earmarked for this purpose, we’re able to expand this program to 14 additional $500 grants, seven to be allocated in May and seven more in June. These grants are only available to MFA Program for Creative Writing (Goddard and Warren Wilson) alumni and faculty.

If the pandemic has put you in dire financial straits, you can apply for one of the seven $500 May grants simply by emailing [email protected] with your full name and contact information, including your mailing address. 

We cannot possibly judge your needs. If you’re in serious need, simply apply—no explanation necessary. Names submitted no later than May 30^th will be included in the May cycle. Each person who applies will be assigned a number, and on May 31, seven will be selected via a random number generator. No bias, and no judgment; just the luck of the draw. Names submitted but not selected in April will be included in the random draw, and names submitted but not selected in May will be forwarded to the June round to be considered along with new applicants. We’ll publish a reminder in early June for that month’s cycle. Please note: this is a one-time gift per recipient/recipient’s family. 

With all best wishes for your health and safety,

The Friends of Writers Board

Friends of Writers offering $500.00 emergency grants in response to COVID-19

We fear that some members of our alumni and faculty community have found their lives seriously disrupted due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

While our first obligation is to provide scholarships, the Board would like to offer a small measure of economic relief in the form of eight total $500 emergency assistance grants. These grants will be issued in two application cycles: the first four grants in April, and the second four in July. These grants are only available to MFA Program for Creative Writing (Goddard and Warren Wilson) alumni and faculty.

We recognize that these grants will not resolve major financial hardship, but we hope they can serve as a stop-gap measure for some members of our community who are in need. If the pandemic has put you in dire financial straits, you can apply for one of the eight $500 grants simply by emailing [email protected] with your name and contact information. 

We cannot possibly judge your needs. If you are in serious need, simply apply—no explanation necessary. Names submitted no later than April 20^th will be included in the April cycle. The deadline for the July cycle will be announced in June. Each applicant will be assigned a number, and on April 21 four recipients will be selected via a random number generator. No bias and no judgment—just the luck of the draw. Names not selected will be forwarded to the next round to be considered along with new applicants. 

Please note: this is a one-time gift per recipient/recipient’s family. 

With all best wishes for your health and safety,

The Friends of Writers Board

Friends of Writers has already begun plans to celebrate our 30^th Anniversary in 2021. On this anniversary, we will recognize Ellen Bryant Voigt, our founder, for her remarkable contributions to American poetry, teaching, and innovation. We write today in the hope that you will give to the Ellen Bryant Voigt Scholarship Fund, which both honors Ellen and enables her work to continue. This scholarship fund is the best way we know to acknowledge and thank Ellen for the gifts she has given to the writing community. 

When fully endowed at $300,000, the EBV Scholarship Fund will provide substantial funding to be used to support a MFA studenttowards the completion of a thesis manuscript. Your contribution is an essential gift of time: to write, revise, and benefit from the guidance of an accomplished faculty. Thanks to you, we achieved our goal and raised more than $30,000 this spring. We are just $100,000 short of endowment, which, with the help of individual donors like you, we will reach by 2021.

Ellen founded the first low-residency MFA program for creative writers in 1976, knowing that there were many adults who had delayed the dream of going to graduate school for good reasons—family, work, health, and finances. We all know what it means to put a dream aside and what it requires to bring it to fruition. The EBV Fund will help students keep their dream right at the center of their lives, avoiding at least some of the delays that dilute it. I hope that you will the join FOW board members in giving the Gift of Time to another writer. 

FOW is committed to helping writers meet their potential through graduate study and provide support and resources through its website, multiple reading series, contest, and yearly conference. We support diversity and inclusivity through our scholarships and internships. We hope to make it possible for every writer to pursue graduate study in spite of financial disparity. 

In the spirit of the season, please help us honor Ellen’s lifework and FOW’s mission by endowing the Ellen Bryant Voigt Scholarship Fund, and give whatever you can so that we may award the first scholarship to a student in Ellen’s name in 2021. 

We wish you and your loved ones a happy, healthy new year, and, most of all, the gift of time. 

Only six weeks left until the deadline for the Larry Levis Prize! Don’t let them slip past without submitting. Please let Ashley Nissler know if you have any questions: https://friendsofwriters.submittable.com/submit

An excerpt from “Sundowning” by Angela Narciso Torres (poetry, ’09) published at The Missouri Review:

SUNDOWNING

                                                     for my mother, Carmen

The sweetest meat clings to the bone,
  my mother says, knifing her steak.
Carmen. Silver spade on my tongue.

  Mahjong nights, her mother and father gone,
she cried herself to sleep. Blamed in the morning
  for her mother’s losing hand. Unlucky tears!

The sweetest meat—she begins
  at dinner, tearing off a chicken leg.
What will she recall by morning?

  Named for Our Lady of Mount Carmel,
she pinned brown scapulars under our shirts,
  wet stamps that cleaved to our skin.

Carmen. Prayer on the breath.
  Amid potted ferns, she works
a jigsaw puzzle. Bizet on the radio. […continue reading here]