NEA Announces 2019 Writing, Translation, Arts Works Fellowships

The National Endowment for the Arts has announced a total of $1.2 million in the form of sixty individual fellowships it has awarded to creative writers of prose and translators of literature for 2020.

Texas grantees include writers Greg Marshall and Karen Olsson, both of Austin.

The thirty-six Creative Writing Fellowships are $25,000 each, for a total of $900,000. Fellowships alternate each year between poetry and prose and this year’s fellowships are to support prose—works of fiction and creative nonfiction, such as memoirs and personal essays. The Arts Endowment received nearly 1,700 eligible applications for the fellowships. Visit the Arts Endowment’s Literature Fellowships webpage to read excerpts by and features on past Creative Writing Fellows and Literature Translation Fellows.

The National Endowment for the Arts has also approved 1,187 grants totaling $27.3 million in the first round of fiscal year 2020 funding to support arts projects in every state in the nation, as well as the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.

Dallas’s Deep Vellum Publishing has been approved for an Art Works grant to support the publication and promotion of books of fiction and poetry. This is Deep Vellum’s first NEA grant. Supported upcoming Deep Vellum publications include titles by Fowzia Karimi, Taisia Kitaiskaia, and Tatiana Ryckman, as well as work in translation by Märta Tikkanen (Finland), Jessica Schiefauer (Sweden), and Laylâ Erbil (Turkey).

“The arts are at the heart of our communities, connecting people through shared experiences and artistic expression,” said Arts Endowment chairman Mary Anne Carter. “The National Endowment for the Arts is proud to support projects like Deep Vellum Publishing.”

Austin’s American Short Fiction received $10,000 to support publication and promotion of the magazine. The University of Houston was awarded $40,000 to support Arte Público Press in the publication and promotion of books of fiction.

United States Artists Announces 2020 Fellows

United States Artists has announced its 2020 fellows. This year, fifty artists across ten creative disciplines will receive unrestricted $50,000 cash awards. The awards honor their creative accomplishments and support their ongoing artistic and professional development. USA Fellowships are awarded to artists at all stages of their careers and from all areas of the country through a rigorous nomination and panel selection process. Fellowships are given in the following disciplines: Architecture & Design, Craft, Dance, Film, Media, Music, Theater & Performance, Traditional Arts, Visual Art, and Writing.

The 2020 USA Fellows for Writing include Sarah Broom, graduate of the University of North Texas and author of the National Book Award winner The Yellow House (Grove Press, 2019).

MacDowell Foundation Residencies

Austin dancemaker Allison Orr of Forklift Dancework has been awarded a residency at the MacDowell Foundation where she will work on a book project about her artistic practice.

Fifty-nine Booksellers Win Scholarships to Children’s Institute

The American Booksellers Association has named fifty-nine winners of scholarships to the 2020 Children’s Institute (Ci8) in Tucson, Arizona. The awards cover the conference fee, a four-night stay at the host hotel, and up to $400 in travel expenses to the June 22–24 event at the Westin La Paloma Resort & Spa.

Texas recipients of scholarships to the eighth Children’s Institute are Stefani Kelley of The Book Nook in Brenham, Joy Preble of Brazos Bookstore in Houston, and Cristina Rodriguez of Deep Vellum Books in Dallas.

San Antonio Artists Named as NALAC Grant Awardees

The National Association of Latino Arts and Culture (NALAC) has announced the recipients of its 2020 Fund for the Arts grants. Five local artists were selected for this year's San Antonio Artist Grants, which have been presented in partnership with the city's Department of Arts and Culture since 2015. 

This year's awardees include poet Ariana Brown, actor and playwright José Rubén De León, and journalist and producer M. Solis. Each $5,400 grant will support the creation and presentation of new artistic works in San Antonio.

National Endowment for the Humanities Announces $30.9 Million for 188 Humanities Projects Nationwide

Grant awards support innovative digital projects for the public, humanities initiatives on college campuses, and infrastructure projects at cultural institutions. An additional $48 million supports community programs at state humanities councils.

“These NEH grants will expand access to the country’s wealth of historical, literary, and artistic resources by helping archivists and curators care for important heritage collections and using new media to inspire examination of significant texts and ideas,” said Chairman Peede. “In keeping with NEH’s “A More Perfect Union” initiative, these projects will open pathways for students to engage meaningfully with the humanities and focus public attention on the history, culture, and political thought of the United States’ first 250 years as a nation.”  

The ten Texas grantees were awarded a total of $1,484,591. Grantees of literary awards are:

Ashley Farmer of the University of Texas at Austin for a research and writing leading to a biography of black nationalist Audley Moore (1890s–1997), whose political life spanned much of the twentieth century’s black nationalist movement.

Joan Neuberger of the University of Texas at Austin for research and writing leading to a book on Soviet film director and theorist Sergei Eisenstein (1898–1948) and his late writings about art, landscape, and politics.

Luke Nichter of Texas A & M University - Central Texas for research and writing leading to a book on the history of the 1968 US presidential election.

Texas Tech University for strategic planning and curricular revision for a reframed Humanities Arts and Letters major in the Honors College.

Julie Johnson of the University of Texas at San Antonio for research and writing leading to a book about Dutch Golden Age painter Maria van Oosterwyck (1630–1693), her painting Vanitas Still Life (1668), and its display in museums from the seventeenth century to the present.

Juliet Wiersema of the University of Texas at San Antonio for research and writing leading to a book on unpublished maps depicting the economic life of free and enslaved Africans in Nueva Granada (modern-day Colombia) during the eighteenth century.