LIST OF GRANTS FOR DISABLED WRITERS
Excerpt from
The Profitable Writer: Managing the Writer’s Money, Chapter 7
Check the individual grant websites for deadlines as they vary from year to year.
1. Voices of Diversity
Sponsor: The Mendocino County Writers Conference
Grant Title: Voices of Diversity
Application deadline: February
Purpose: Project-based grants of up to $2,500 to women and trans* artists in Greater Philadelphia to fund art for social change projects.
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2. Kittredge Fund Organization
Sponsor/Grant Title: John Anson Kittredge Educational Fund
Application Deadline: February 15th of the grant year
Purpose/Award Value: Help writers engaged in specific projects that will contribute to the development of their creative or scholarly potential. $1,000 to $10,000
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3. Artist Trust
Sponsor: The Artist Trust Foundation
Grant Title: Carnegie Fund for Authors
Purpose: Provide emergency financial assistance for writers who have published at least one successful book, including the disabled writers.
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4. American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA)
Sponsor: American Society of Journalists and Authors
Grant Title: Writers’ Emergency Assistance Fund
Purpose: To help disabled writers that need temporary financial help. Not for funding projects.
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5. PEN Writers Fund
Sponsor: PEN America
Grant Title: The Writers Fund
Purpose/Award: Eligible writers receive up to $2,000 in the form of grants or loans.
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6. The Haven Foundation Grants
Sponsor/Grant Title: Freedom with writing
Purpose/Award: Aids established freelance artists and writers who have suffered disabilities or a career-threatening illness, accident, natural disaster or personal catastrophe. Established by Stephen King.
Deadline: Check website for deadline.
Eligibility: Legal US residents
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7. Awesome Foundation Grant
Sponsor: The Awesome Foundation
Title: Awesome Disability Grants
Limitations: Does not apply to individual’s medical needs, rent, utilities, home repairs, car trouble, appliances, etc.
Awards: $1000 Micro grants.
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Grants for All Writers
1. The Art and Change Grant
Sponsor: The Leeway Foundation
Title: The Art and Change Grant (ACG)
Restrictions: Available to women and transgender artists and writers based in Greater Philadelphia, whose work emphasizes social change.
Locality restrictions: For residents of Bucks, Camden, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery or Philadelphia counties.
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2. Sustainable Arts Foundation
Sponsor: Sustainable Arts Foundation
Title: Sustainable Arts Foundation Award
Restrictions: Awarded to artists and writers with at least one child under the age of 18.
Value: 20 artists and writers received $5,000 each.
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3. Awesome Foundation Grant
Sponsor: The Awesome Foundation
Title: Awesome Grants
Awards: $1000 Micro grants. No restrictions except the grants are for projects. Competitive.
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4. PEN/Phyllis Naylor Working Writer Fellowship
Sponsor: PEN America
Title: Penn-Naylor Fellowship
Eligibility: Applicants should have published at least one children’s or YA fiction novel by a U.S. trade publisher.
Awards: $5000 to children or YA authors.
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5. Karen and Philip Cushman Late Bloomer Award
Sponsor: Society of Children’s Books and Illustrators, established by Newbery Award winner and Newbery Honor Book recipient Karen Cushman and her husband, Philip Cushman.
Title: Late Bloomer Award
Restrictions: For unpublished children’s book authors or author/illustrators over the age of fifty.
Eligibility: Applicants should have published at least one children’s or YA fiction novel by a U.S. trade publisher.
Awards: $500 and free tuition to an SCBWI conference anywhere in the world.
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6. The Arkansas International Emerging Writer’s Prize
Sponsor: Arkansas International
Title: Emerging Writer’s Prize in Fiction
Eligibility: Unpublished writers
Awards: $1000
Application Fee: The application fee is $20, which includes a one-year subscription of The Arkansas International. Multiple entries within one grant cycle.
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7. The Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence
Sponsor: Arkansas International
Title: Emerging Writer’s Prize in Fiction
Eligibility: African American U.S. citizens with a published work of fiction, and you should be willing to attend the award ceremony in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Awards: $15,000 cash prize
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8. Get Away to Write Scholarship
Sponsor: Murphy Writing of Stockton University
Title: Get Away to Write Scholarship
Purpose: A number of scholarships are offered in locations around the world.
Awards: $1,000 scholarship to attend weeklong supportive writing experience.
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9. The National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowships program
Sponsor: The National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowships program
Title: Creative Writing Fellowships
Purpose: For published (fiction and creative nonfiction) and poetry creative writers to set aside time for writing, research, travel, and general career advancement.
Awards: $25,000 grants
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10. Creative Capital Award
Sponsor: Creative Capital
Title: Creative Capital Awards
Purpose: Designed to help artists working in all creative disciplines realize their visions and build sustainable practices.
Awards: Up to $50,000 in direct funding and career developer. Total commitment up to $100,000 per project.
11. Southern Studies Fellowship
Sponsor: Chapman Cultural Center and Hub City Writers Project
Purpose: artists and writers who are interested in immersing themselves in the culture of the American South. Fellows will travel throughout the Southeast to conduct research at cultural and educational institutions as they develop ideas for a collaborative project that expands the understanding of the modern South. Housing and a monthly stipend of $900 included.
Deadline: April 29, 2021.
Awards: Housing and a monthly stipend of $900 included.
12. Funds for Writers
An excellent source of numerous funds and grants for writers.
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Emergency Grants for Writers
1. The Foundation for the Max’s Kansas City Project
Sponsor: Max’s Kansas Project
Title: Emergency Grants
Purpose: To provide emergency funding and resources to financially distressed individuals in the creative and performing arts for housing, medical and legal aid.
Awards: One-time grants are awarded ranging from $500-$1000.
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2. Carnegie Fund for Authors
Sponsor: The Authors Club
Purpose: Awards granted to published authors who are in need of emergency financial assistance as a result of illness or injury to self, spouse, or dependent child, or who has had some other misfortune that has placed the applicant in pressing and substantial pecuniary need.
Eligibility: The applicant must be an American author who has published at least one full-length work — fiction or nonfiction — that has been published by a mainstream publisher. A work may have been published in eBook format only, or in hardcover or softcover format, or in more than one format.
Amount of Awards: Not specified
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3. Author’s League Fund
Sponsor/Title: Author’s League Fund
Purpose: Open-ended, interest-free, no-strings-attached loans to professional writers and dramatists who find themselves in financial need because of medical or health-related problems, temporary loss of income or other misfortune.
Awards: Not specified
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4. PEN America
Sponsor: Author’s League Fund
Title: Pen Writer’s Emergency Fund; The Fund for Writers and Editors with HIV/AIDS
Purpose: (Pen Writer’s Emergency Fund) To provide small grants to professional—published or produced—writers in acute or unexpected financial crisis. The Fund for Writers and Editors with HIV/AIDS, gives grants to professional writers and editors who face serious financial difficulties because of HIV or AIDS-related illness.
Awards: $2000
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5. Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Emergency Fund
Sponsor: SFWA
Title: The Emergency Medical Fund
Purpose: To help genre writers pay medical expenses not otherwise covered by insurance.
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6. American Society of Journalists and Authors
Sponsor: Charitable Trust of the American Society of Journalists and Authors.
Title: Writer’s Emergency Fund
Purpose: Helps established freelance writers across the country who, because of advanced age, illness, disability, a natural disaster, or an extraordinary professional crisis, are unable to work.
Restrictions: Membership in ASJA not required. No grants to fund works-in-progress of any kind.
Awards: Maximum grant: $3,500
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7. The Society of Authors: Contingency Funds
Sponsor: Charitable Trust of the American Society of Journalists and Authors.
Title: Writer’s Emergency Fund
Purpose: Grants are for contingencies, to help professional writers who need financial assistance in a variety of ways.
Restrictions: Open to professional writers.
Specific grants are available for poets and women journalists.
Awards: No details given
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8. Writers’ Trust of Canada: Woodcock Fund
Sponsor: Charitable Trust of the American Society of Journalists and Authors.
Title: Writer’s Emergency Fund
Purpose: Last-resource emergency resource for Canadian writers who face unforeseen financial crisis, who are engaged in a book-length work.
Restrictions: Canadian writers who have published at least two books, or an equivalent body of work
Awards: CAD 2,000-10,000