Emerging Voices Fellowship
The Emerging Voices Fellowship, run out of our Los Angeles office, is a literary mentorship that aims to provide new writers who are isolated from the literary establishment with the tools, skills, and knowledge they need to launch a professional writing career.
Click here to see the 2018 Emerging Voices Fellows & Mentors »
LITERARY MENTORSHIP BENEFITS
By the end of the Emerging Voices Fellowship, a writer will leave with:
- Seven months of guidance from a professional mentor and written notes on their current writing project.
- An author photo and bio.
- A logline—the short summation of the project in progress.
- A clear action plan for finishing this project.
- Writing life, and craft tips, from notable visiting authors.
- An editing guide from a professional copy editor.
- Insider knowledge of publishing from agents, publishers, and editors.
- An individualized submission guide for literary journals, agents, residencies, and fellowships.
- Improved reading technique from a professional voice coach.
- Public reading experience for a variety of audiences.
- An understanding of how to be an effective workshop participant.
- Lifetime membership in PEN America.
- An introduction to the Los Angeles literary community.
FELLOWSHIP COMPONENTS
The seven-month fellowship includes:
PROFESSIONAL MENTORSHIP: Emerging Voices Mentors are carefully chosen from PEN America’s membership and from professional writers based in Los Angeles. The Mentor-Fellow relationship is expected to challenge the fellow’s work and compel significant creative progress. Over the course of the fellowship, Emerging Voices Fellows and Mentors should meet three times in person, and be in contact at least once a month. In these three meetings, Mentors will offer written feedback on the Emerging Voices Fellows’ work in progress. Authors who have been mentors in the past include Amelia Gray, Harryette Mullen, Chris Abani, Ramona Ausubel, Meghan Daum, Sherman Alexie, Jade Chang and J. Ryan Stradal
CLASSES AT THE UCLA EXTENSION WRITERS’ PROGRAM: Participants will attend two free courses (a 12-week writing course and a one-day workshop) at UCLA Extension, donated by the Writers’ Program. Program Manager will assist the Emerging Voices Fellows with course selection.
AUTHOR EVENINGS: Fellows will meet with visiting authors, editors, publishers and agents in a private setting to ask questions about craft. Fellows must read each visiting author’s book before the evening. A schedule of Author Evenings is distributed at the first Emerging Voices orientation meeting.
MASTER CLASSES: After completing the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program courses, Emerging Voices Fellows will enroll in a Master Class. The Master Class is a genre-specific workshop with a professional writer that affords fellows the opportunity to exchange feedback on their works in progress. The 2018 Master Class Instructors are Alex Espinoza (fiction and nonfiction), and F. Douglas Brown (poetry).
F. Douglas Brown of Los Angeles is the author of Zero to Three (University of Georgia Press 2014), and recipient of the 2013 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. He holds a MA in Literature and Creative Writing from San Francisco State University, teaches English at Loyola High School, and is both a Cave Canem and Kundiman fellow. Mr. Brown’s poems have appeared most recently in The Virginia Quarterly(VQR), The Bat City Review, and San Pedro River Review, and he was featured in Poets and Writers Magazine as one of their Debut Poets of 2014.
Alex Espinoza was born in Tijuana, Mexico and earned an MFA from UC-Irvine’s Program in Writing. His first novel, Still Water Saints was published by Random House in 2007 and was released simultaneously in Spanish under the title Los Santos de Agua Mansa, California. Random House also published his second novel The Five Acts of Diego León in 2013. Alex has written for the New York Times Sunday Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, Huizache, The Southern California Review, the American Book Review, the Virginia Quarterly Review, American Short Fiction, and NPR’s All Things Considered.
VOLUNTEER PROJECT: All Emerging Voices Fellows are expected to complete a 25-hour volunteer project that is relevant to the literary community. The 2017 Fellows collaborated on projects with 826LA, DSTLA Arts, and POPS the Club.
VOICE INSTRUCTION CLASS: The Fellowship will provide a one-day workshop with Dave Thomas, a professional voice actor. The Emerging Voices Fellows will read their work in a recording studio and receive instruction on reading their work publicly.
PUBLIC READINGS: Fellows will participate in three public readings, The Welcome Party, Tongue & Groove Salon, and the Final Reading. Fellows have read in various venues and events including the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, Silver Lake Jubilee, Skylight Bookstore, The Standard, Downtown LA, and Hotel Café. The fellowship culminates in a Final Reading showcasing the progress each fellow has made in his or her work.
STIPEND: The fellowship includes a $1,000 stipend, given in $500 increments.
The Emerging Voices Fellowship runs from January to July. Participants need not be published, but the fellowship is directed toward poets and writers of fiction and creative nonfiction with clear ideas of what they hope to accomplish through their writing.
The application period for 2019 will open June 1, 2018.
More Information
People ineligible for the Emerging Voices Fellowship:
- Those who have an M.A., M.F.A., Ph.D. or minors in Creative Writing.
- Students currently enrolled in undergraduate or graduate degree programs.
- Those who are Professional PEN America members.
- Writers who have published one or more books through major publishing houses, university presses, or established presses.
- Current professional magazine/newspaper feature writers or editors.
- Writers who are widely published in top tier literary journals and/or magazines.
- Anyone under the age of 21.
Emerging Voices is a rigorous fellowship based in Los Angeles with weekly meetings and an intense reading and writing schedule. With this in mind, participants must be willing and able to make an enthusiastic commitment to the fellowship and to their involvement as members of a group. If you are not a resident of Los Angeles and you are awarded the fellowship you will need to relocate for the seven-month period. Housing is not provided.
The Emerging Voices Fellowship originated as a mentorship project. The project grew out of PEN America Los Angeles’s forum “Writing the Immigrant Experience,” held at the Los Angeles Central Library in March 1994, which explored the issues and challenges faced by first and second generation immigrant writers. It was evident from the forum that many of the culturally diverse communities of writers in Southern California were often isolated from the literary establishment. In the fall of 1996, PEN America Los Angeles initiated Emerging Voices as a literary mentorship program designed to launch potential professional writers from minority, immigrant and other underrepresented communities. The program has now evolved into an seven-month writing fellowship for writers who lack access to a traditional writing education and seek financial and creative support.
Here’s a note from one of the fellowship’s supporter, Jamie Wolf, supporter of the Emerging Voices Fellowship program:
“The Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation was established in 1948 by my parents, a young businessman and his fashion-editor wife, who clearly had a great deal of confidence in their eventual financial success as well as a genuine desire to contribute to the world outside themselves. As my father formulated it in the beginning, ‘Individuals fortunate enough to receive unusual benefits from a society have the distinct obligation to return meaningful, tangible support to that society—in the form of creative energy as well as funding.’ What this has meant over the years is a pattern of rewarding excellence and accomplishment by giving awards in the fields of medicine, art and literature. In the last several decades, as the younger generation has begun to have more of a say, the goal has modulated into an emphasis on more directly encouraging excellence and accomplishment—by funding programs as well as awards, thus concentrating on setting up structures for achievement, and utilizing the multiplier effect.”
PEN America’s Emerging Voices Fellowship is generously supported by the Amazon Literary Partnership, California Arts Council, New Balloon and Catapult, Los Angeles County Arts Commission, The Ovation Foundation, Pasadena Literary Alliance, The Rosenthal Family Foundation, and Jamie and David Wolf.
The 2019 Emerging Voices Application period will be open from June 1 to August 1, 2018.
Do I need to live in the Los Angeles area to apply to the Emerging Voices Fellowship?
You must be a US citizen or have the correct documentation to apply to the Emerging Voices Fellowship. All fellows must live in Los Angeles or close enough to commute to Los Angeles for the duration of the program. No funds are available for relocation.
Are there any age restrictions?
The Emerging Voices Fellowship is open to all writers over the age of 21.
Can I submit work that has been previously published?
Yes, if you feel it is the work that best represents you as a writer.
Can you help me decide what work to submit as my writing sample?
No, although we do strongly encourage you to submit writing that corresponds to your genre and your project proposal. Please make full use of the 20 page submission limit for prose, but do not exceed 20 pages. This allows the selection committee to gain a better understanding of your project and how you and your work could benefit from the fellowship.
How should the manuscript be formatted?
Fiction and nonfiction manuscripts should be double-spaced, 12-point font, 1-inch margins all around. You may format poetry manuscripts however you feel best represents the poetry you are submitting, as long as you do not exceed the page limit and the typed font is legible. All pages must be numbered.
What does the selection committee look for in a manuscript?
A strong writing sample. The best advice we can give is to seek the advice of other writers and instructors when preparing your manuscript.
When are applicants notified of the committee’s decision?
All applicants will be notified in late November.
Can you give me feedback on my manuscript or tell me why I wasn’t selected for the fellowship?
We cannot provide any comments on manuscripts or on applications submitted.
On the short answer section of the Emerging Voices application, it states you may use up to 500 words for each answer. Does this mean 500 words for each answer or 500 words for all ten questions combined?
It states each response can be up to 500 words maximum. That means each response for each individual question may be up to 500 words, not 500 words for all ten responses.
I write screenplays/graphic novels/children’s books. Am I eligible?
The accepted genres for the Emerging Voices Fellowship are fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. All classes, mentors, and programming for the fellowship are based on one of these three genres. Many alumni have gone on to pursue careers in graphic novels, performance art, and screenwriting, but concentrated on either prose or poetry for the duration of the fellowship.
If offered a place in the fellowship, may I defer acceptance for another year?
You may not defer acceptance.
If not awarded the fellowship, may I reapply?
If you are not awarded a fellowship, we encourage you to reapply if interested.
For more info, please contact [email protected].
Bennington Writing Seminars Emerging Voices Scholarship
Bennington Writing Seminars, in partnership with the PEN America Los Angeles’s Emerging Voices Fellowship, established a one-time creative writing MFA scholarship for Emerging Voices Fellows in 2018. Bennington will grant the scholarship amount of $10,000 across four terms for an Emerging Voices Fellow for the January 2018 residency.
Congratulations to alumna Shari Poindexter (EV ‘01) on being awarded the $10,000 Bennington Writing Seminars Emerging Voices Scholarship!
A sincere thank you to Bennington for extending two additional scholarships to fiction writers Monica Carter (EV ‘10) and Davin Malasarn (EV ‘08)!
The Bennington Writing Seminars Emerging Voices Scholarship was made possible by the generosity of the Bennington January 2017 graduating class. We are grateful to them for their support and for creating this incredible opportunity.
Shari Poindexter is a doctoral candidate in Occupational Therapy at USC who has led seminars and workshops on a range of healthcare issues specifically for cancer survivors and underserved populations. She is also a Hospice volunteer. Poindexter was a PEN America Los Angeles Emerging Voices Fellow, and she earned a John Densmore Scholarship at UCLA and a May Merrill Miller award for outstanding short story.
Monica Carter is Program Director of the Lambda Literary Foundation’s LGBTQ Writers-in-Schools program. She was a PEN America Los Angeles MARK Program Fiction Fellow, a Lambda Literary Foundation LGBT Emerging Writer Fellow, and a PEN America Los Angeles Emerging Voices Fellow.
Davin Malasarn is Lead Writer and Director of Presidential Communications at Cal Tech. He has a Ph.D. in biology, and was a PEN America Los Angeles Emerging Voices Fellow. He is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, a finalist for Glimmer Train’s Very Short Fiction Contest, and was a featured writer for the New Short Fiction Series.
Thanks to everyone who came out to celebrate the 2018 Emerging Voices last Friday at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions.
Angela, Ron, Natalie, Francisco, and Jubi read excerpts of their work to a packed house full of friends, family, mentors, EV alumni, instructors, and writers. It was literary Los Angeles at its finest.
Take a look at the photos here and make sure to mark your calendars for their next reading at the Hotel Café on Saturday, April 28 for Tongue and Groove with musical guest Elephants With Guns.
PEN America Los Angeles is generously supported by the Amazon Literary Partnership, California Arts Council, Herb Alpert Foundation, Rosenthal Family Foundation, UCLA Extension Writers’ Program, The City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, Los Angeles County Arts Commission, National Endowment for the Arts, New Balloon & Catapult, and Ovation Foundation.
PEN America and Tongue & Groove presented a reading by the 2018 Emerging Voices Fellows at Hotel Café. It was a night of reading and drinking with musical guest Elephants With Guns. Featuring Jubi Arriola-Headley, Ron L. Dowell, Natalie Mislang Mann, Angela M. Sanchez, and Francisco Uribe.
Listen to a recording of the event:
Fellows
Jubi Arriola-Headley is a first-generation American born to Bajan (Barbadian) parents in Boston, Massachusetts, where he was also raised. A VONA/Voices and Lambda Literary alumnus, Jubi lives in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where he works as a freelance writer and nonprofit consultant. He is working on his first collection of poems, tentatively titled Demons, in which he aims to navigate the political and emotional landscape between rage and joy.
Ron L. Dowell is a lifelong resident of the Watts and Compton areas of Los Angeles. Employed for 38 years with Los Angeles County, Ron has a unique perspective on local urban communities that, in turn, inform many of his stories. He holds two master’s degrees from California State University, Long Beach, in criminal justice and emergency services administration. Ron is working on a collection of short stories.
Natalie Mislang Mann is an educator who holds a master of arts in humanities from San Francisco State University. Her writing has appeared in Angel City Review, The Rattling Wall, and the anthology Only Light Can do That. Natalie is currently working on a memoir based on her experiences growing up in a multi-ethnic family in the San Fernando Valley.
Angela M. Sanchez is a Los Angeles native and UCLA alumna. Working at the nexus of higher education, policy, and the nonprofit sector, Angela focuses on narratives that have been typically underrepresented in children’s literature. She has written and self-published a children’s book, Scruffy and the Egg, about single parenthood and homelessness. She is currently working on her first young adult novel.
Francisco Uribe is a writer from Long Beach, California. He earned a bachelor’s degree in history and English from UCLA. His fiction has been published in Crab Orchard Review, Zona de Carga/Loading Zone, Verdad Magazine, and Westwind. Francisco works for a nonprofit organization where he mentors at-risk youth, and is currently working on a collection of short stories.
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