Whale Rock Scholarships 2024
Please note: We are currently revisiting our grants and scholarships programs for 2024. Please reach out if you require financial support for our single-session, two-session, and four-to-six-week programs. Unfortunately, we do not have funding available for our weeklong programs, our in-person programs or our mentorship programs. We encourage you to look into whether your state or province offers grants for the arts. We’ve had students participate in our mentorship with grants from the Canadian government and from the state of Vermont.
OTHER GRANTS
BIPOC GRANTS
The Walter Grant
https://diversebooks.org/our-programs/walter-grant/
The Walter Grants were established to amplify and elevate diverse writers as well as their diverse works and to provide financial support to promising diverse writers who are currently unpublished. In 2015, five grants were ($2000 each) to five emerging writers and illustrators, and eleven more grants have been awarded.
The 2020 cycle opens to submissions on May 31, 2020, and they will be awarding 10 grants
The grants are for $2000 each.
WNDB Internship Grants
https://diversebooks.org/our-programs/internship-grants/
The WNDB Internship Grant Program provides supplemental grants to students from diverse backgrounds who help to further their goals of pursuing a career in children’s publishing. All applicants must identify as coming from a diverse background, be United States citizens or permanent residents, and must make children's literature the main focus of their summer internship. They are looking to support interns who will be working on all aspects of kids' book publishing, including marketing, design, and editing.
Details on the 2021 Internship Grant Season are coming soon
A minimum of fifteen $3000 grants to award
Diverse Writers Grant
http://speculativeliterature.org/grants/slf-diverse-writers-and-diverse-worlds-grants/
The Diverse Writers grant is intended to support writers from underrepresented and underprivileged groups, such as writers of color, women, queer writers, disabled writers, working-class writers, etc. — those whose marginalized identities may present additional obstacles in the writing / publishing process. Only eligible for fiction novels
Applications close on August 31, 2020
Winners will receive $500
Diverse Worlds Grant
The $500 Diverse Worlds grant is intended for work that best presents a diverse world, regardless of the writer’s background.
Applications close on August 31, 2020
Winners will receive $500
Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence
http://ernestjgainesaward.org/literary-award-about
The Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence serves to inspire and recognize rising African-American fiction writers of excellence at a national level. The book award has become nationally recognized in its role of enhancing visibility of emerging African-American fiction writers while also expanding the audience for this literature.
Entries must be received by August 30, 2020
The annual award of a $15,000 cash prize is to support the writer and help enable her/him to focus on her/his art of writing.
LGBTQ+ GRANTS
Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction, and the Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction
https://publishingtriangle.org/awards/randy-shilts-gay-nonfiction/
This award recognizes works that are by or about gay men, bisexual men, and/or transmen, or that have a significant influence upon the lives of queer men.
Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction
https://publishingtriangle.org/awards/edmund-white-debut-fiction/
This award recognizes outstanding first novels or story collections by LGBTQ authors. The award is open to first-book authors of any age whose work contains queer themes. Writers can have published works of nonfiction, and their short fiction can have previously appeared in a published anthology. The book nominated must be the author’s first work of book-length fiction.
2020 winners have already been selected
Winner receives a prize of $1000
Publishing Triangle Award for Trans and Gender-Variant Literature
https://publishingtriangle.org/awards/trans-gender-variant-literature/
This award recognizes outstanding work from the gender-nonconforming community. Fiction (including for children), and nonfiction by trans or gender-variant (T/GV) authors is eligible. Nonfiction authored or co-authored by cis authors that is primarily about the T/GV experience or community is also eligible.
2020 winners have already been selected
Winner receives a prize of $1000
General Grants
Bard Fiction Prize
The Bard Fiction Prize is awarded to a promising emerging writer who is an American citizen aged 39 years or younger at the time of application. It is intended to encourage and support young writers of fiction, and provide them with an opportunity to work in a fertile intellectual environment. Applicants should have published at least one book
Applications for the 2021 semester is closed
In addition to the $30,000 cash award, the winner receives an appointment as writer in residence at Bard College for one semester, without the expectation that he or she teach traditional courses. The recipient gives at least one public lecture and meets informally with students.
Sustainable Arts Foundation Award
https://www.sustainableartsfoundation.org
It is awarded to artists and writers with at least one child under the age of 18. The foundation strives to support parents who are trying to balance their creative work with the demands of child-rearing. Writers are welcome to submit work within 11 different genres.
The 2021 award application will be open to the public starting February 1, and closes February 26.
20 winners will receive $5000
Awesome Foundation Grant
https://www.awesomefoundation.org/en/about_us
Each fully autonomous chapter supports awesome projects through micro-grants, usually given out monthly. These micro-grants, $1000 or the local equivalent, come out of pockets of the chapter's "trustees" and are given on a no-strings-attached basis to people and groups working on awesome projects.
Winners are selected monthly
Winners will receive $1000
PEN/Phyllis Naylor Grant for Children’s and Young Adult Novelists
https://pen.org/pen-phyllis-naylor-grant/#
The PEN/Phyllis Naylor Grant for Children’s and Young Adult Novelists is offered annually to an author of children’s or young adult fiction for a novel-in-progress. The award was developed to help writers whose work is of high literary caliber and assist a writer at a crucial moment in their career to complete their novel.
Applications for 2021 are now closed
The author of the winning manuscript will receive an award of $5,000.
George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation
https://www.brown.edu/howard-foundation/about
Administered by Brown University, this fellowship was created with the intention to “provide artists, scholars, and writers with time to complete their work.” It awards a limited number of fellowships each year for independent projects in selected fields, targeting its support specifically to early mid-career individuals, those who have achieved recognition for at least one major project. This fellowship is available to those in the fields of creative non-fiction and history.
Applications will be accepted until November 1, 2020.
A total of nine fellowships of $35,000 will be awarded in April 2021 for 2021-2022