stanford creative writing fellowship

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Stanford Creative Writing Program -- Wallace Stegner Fellowship

Unique among writing programs, Stanford University offers 10 two-year fellowships each year, 5 in fiction and 5 in poetry. All the fellows in each genre convene weekly in a 3-hour workshop with faculty.

Stegner Fellows are regarded as working artists, intent upon practicing and perfecting their craft. The only requirements are writing and workshop attendance. The fellowship offers no degree. We view it as more of an artist-in-residence opportunity for promising writers to spend two years developing their writing in the company of peers and under the guidance of  Stanford faculty .

In awarding fellowships, we consider the quality of the candidate’s creative work, potential for growth, and ability to contribute to and profit from our writing workshops. Our fellows are diverse in style and experience, with talent and seriousness the true common denominators.

The Stegner Fellowship is a full-time academic commitment and is not intended to be pursued concurrently with another degree program. The fellowship includes a living stipend, and a fellow's tuition and health insurance are paid for by the Creative Writing Program. A fellow must live close enough to Stanford in order to attend workshops, readings, and events.

Deadline: Nov. 1, 2023

Agency Website

Eligibility requirements.

Anyone interested in a fellowship is welcome to apply.

Funding Type

Eligibility, external deadline.

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Program Purpose and Description: 

Unique among writing programs, Stanford University offers ten two-year fellowships each year, five in fiction and five in poetry. All the fellows in each genre convene weekly in a 3-hour workshop with faculty. Fellows are regarded as working artists, intent upon practicing and perfecting their craft. There are no curricular requirements other than workshop attendance and writing. The program offers no degree.

Program Benefits: 

Fellowships include a living stipend of approximately $37,000 per year. In addition, fellows' tuition and health insurance are paid for by the Creative Writing Program.

Application Process: 

An application fee is required; however applicants may request a fee waiver, and provide supporting documentation for the waiver.

Applicant Profile: 

The Stanford Creative Writing Program's students are diverse in style and experience, with talent and seriousness being the true common denominators. No school of writing is favored by the Stegner Fellowship over any other.

Eligibility: 

No degrees or tests are required for admission, and chronological age is not a consideration.

Obligations: 

The Stegner Fellowship is a full-time academic commitment, and is not intended to be pursued concurrently with another degree program. Fellows must live close enough to Stanford to be able to attend workshops, readings, and events.

Selection Criteria: 

In awarding fellowships, the selection committee considers the quality of the candidate's creative work, potential for growth and ability to contribute to and profit from the Creative Writing Program's writing workshops.

Citizenship: 

The program welcomes applicants of all nationalities.

Program Deadline: 

Usually no later than December 1.

How To Apply: 

Students or alumni, as applicable, may apply directly to this program. Applicants are encouraged, however, to work with SF State's fellowship advisor well in advance of the program deadline to perfect their application essays and other materials.

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Stegner Fellowship

Stanford university two-year creative writing program / from wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, dear wikiwand ai, let's keep it short by simply answering these key questions:.

Can you list the top facts and stats about Stegner Fellowship?

Summarize this article for a 10 year old

The Stegner Fellowship program is a two-year creative writing fellowship at Stanford University . The award is named after American Wallace Stegner (1909–1993), a historian , novelist , short story writer, environmentalist , and Stanford faculty member who founded the university's creative writing program.

Ten fellowships are awarded every year, five in fiction and five in poetry. The recipients do not need a degree to receive the fellowships, though many fellows already hold the terminal M.F.A. degree in creative writing. A workshop-based program, no degree is awarded after the two-year fellowship. Prior to 1990, many fellows also enrolled in Stanford's now-defunct M.A. program in creative writing. [1] [2]

Fellows receive a stipend of $50,000 per year, as well as health insurance and their tuition fee for Stanford. [3] Fellows are required to live close enough to Stanford to be able to attend all workshops, as well as other department-related readings and events.

125 Stanford Stories

70 years of great writing.

Imagination flourishes in Stanford’s Creative Writing Program

“Minds grow by contact with other minds. The bigger the better, as clouds grow toward thunder by rubbing together.” — Wallace Stegner

The novelist Wallace Stegner came to Stanford in 1946 to teach writing. He found a campus swollen with returning GIs and war workers. This cohort – later known as the Greatest Generation – had interesting stories to tell. At Stanford, Stegner  developed a program  of  workshops, community and freedom to write  that would nurture these writers’ talents and those of generations to come.

The Stegner Fellowships, as Stanford’s two-year writers’ fellowships are now called, are perhaps the best-known facet of Stanford’s  Creative Writing Program . Stegner Fellows have gone on to become Pulitzer Prize winners (N. Scott Momaday, Larry McMurtry, Adam Johnson ), poets laureate of the United States (Robert Pinsky, Philip Levine) and bestselling novelists (Scott Turow). Diverse in origin, they have brought new understanding of their own countries and cultures through literature ( NoViolet Bulawayo ). Many have returned to Stanford to teach new generations (Johnson, Kenneth Fields, Tobias Wolff).

The milieu in which the Stegner Fellows flourish also nourishes the creative gifts of hundreds of Stanford undergraduates each year. Creative writing workshops and tutorials are among Stanford’s most sought-after courses. That’s unsurprising when one considers the value that Stanford puts on output, on expressing one’s ideas.

“We hated the idea that someone would come to this great university and think it’s either/or — ‘I’m going to be a science student, or I’m going to be a creative writer.’ We made the minor so people would know they didn’t have to make that choice.” —  Eavan Boland , director of the Stanford Creative Writing Program

“It’s the art of imagination. It’s a muscle that students want to activate,” explained Tom Kealey, a lecturer in the Creative Writing Program.

Nearly all of Stanford’s creative writing courses are open to undergraduates across the curriculum, though some, like the one-on-one Levinthal Tutorials, require a manuscript review. Nearly 70 percent of Stanford’s English majors have emphases in creative writing, whether in poetry or prose. There is also a creative writing minor. Its new Fiction into Film option culminates in the Hoffs-Roach Tutorial, in which students complete a 100-page screenplay. Another popular option is to take four or five writing courses as an informal emphasis.

The creative nonfiction courses are popular with students in the sciences, Kealey said: “Many want to make sense of their lives by creating narratives.”

Lectures about the craft of writing are also very popular. Professor Elizabeth Tallent teaches a course each spring,  Development of the Short Story , that can attract up to 100 students.

The newest member of the program’s distinguished faculty is  novelist Chang-Rae Lee , who comes to Stanford in fall 2016.

Informal workshops such as Poets’ House and Art of Writing offer an introduction to creative writing across disciplines. Innovative courses seek to explore new literary forms and to bring appreciation of writing to more people in new ways.

Stanford’s creative writing program was the first to offer a course in  completing a graphic novel , a popular class repeated every other year. It gives undergraduate awards for environmental writing, an  important aspect of Wallace Stegner’s legacy .

In spring 2015, program director Eavan Boland led a free online course on  Ten Premodern Poems by Women  that drew more than 1,000 participants from 105 countries. For the course, the office of the Vice Provost of Teaching and Learning enhanced Stanford’s OpenEdX platform to allow participants to submit narrative responses and even poems, an innovation that will help future online humanities courses.

Watch the creation of the Creative Writing Program’s latest graphic novel in this video.

A Conversation and Book Signing with Adam Mansbach

Adam Mansbach  is a novelist, screenwriter, cultural critic and humorist. He is the author of the #1  New York Times  bestseller  Go the Fuck to Sleep , which has been translated into forty languages, named  Time Magazine 's 2011 "Thing of the Year," and sold over three million copies worldwide. His novels include The End of the Jews  and  Angry Black White Boy,  which is taught at over a hundred schools and was adapted into a prize-winning stage play in 2008, as well as his most recent bestelling novel,  The Golem of Brooklyn . 

Moderated by the Reinhard Family Curator of Hebraica and Judaica at Stanford Libraries, Dr. Eitan Kensky.

This event is generously co-sponsored by the Programs in American Studies and Creative Writing, and the Concentration in Education and Jewish Studies in the Graduate School of Education.

Jackie Sumell (MFA '04) awarded a 2024 Guggenheim Fellowship

Stanford alum Jackie Summel (MFA '04) was recently awarded the 2024 Guggenheim Fellowship in the Creative Arts.

The Board of Trustees of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation announced today their appointment of 188 Guggenheim Fellowships to a distinguished and diverse group of culture-creators working across 52 disciplines. Chosen through a rigorous application and peer review process from a pool of almost 3,000 applicants, the Class of 2024 Guggenheim Fellows was tapped on the basis of prior career achievement and exceptional promise. As established in 1925 by founder Senator Simon Guggenheim, each fellow receives a monetary stipend to pursue independent work at the highest level under “the freest possible conditions.”

To see the full list of new Fellows, please visit  www.gf.org .

Associate Professor Kirstin Valdez Quade has been awarded a 2024 John.s.Guggenheim Fellowship

We are absolutely delighted to share the news that Kirstin Valdez Quade has been awarded a  2024 John S. Guggenheim fellowship .  As the foundation notes about its history, “Guggenheim Fellowships are intended for mid-career individuals who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts and exhibit great promise for their future endeavors,” all of which  Kirstin Valdez Quade  has achieved with her body of work.

Public Knowledge Fellows

Stanford Public Humanities is proud to announce a new sixth-year Public Knowledge Fellowship for doctoral candidates in the School of Humanities and Sciences who have demonstrated an interest in the creation and dissemination of humanistic knowledge to a wide public audience. Fellows will have the opportunity to develop a public-facing work of their own vision and to identify a specific community to receive or engage with this work. They will also have opportunities for regular mentorship with Associate Director for Student Programs Laura Goode on their public work.

The fellowship provides a stipend and TGR tuition support for Autumn, Winter, and Spring quarters. The stipend amount for 2024-25 will be announced once it has been determined.

We will offer one fellowship in 2024–25, with additional fellowships to be added in future years.

Eligibility Requirements:

• Applicants must be current fifth-year doctoral candidates, in any department or program within Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences, whose research and public scholarship engage substantively with issues and methods in the humanities, arts, or qualitative social sciences. 
• While we welcome applicants from the arts, we are not currently equipped to mentor students who want to engage the public through works of creative art (e.g. performances, musical compositions, visual art, etc.).
• Active Candidacy
• Completed all requirements for the doctoral degree, including any required teaching, with the exception of the dissertation and the University Oral Examination (when a defense of the dissertation)
• An approved dissertation reading committee
• A dissertation proposal approved by their committee
• A strong likelihood of completing the degree within the tenure of the fellowship.
• Applicants must have previously taken Stanford Public Humanities’ cornerstone class “Pitching and Publishing in Popular Media” or else demonstrate equivalent experience.
• Fellows may not hold a concurrent fellowship (such as the Mellon Fellowship). 
• This fellowship is not deferrable to a subsequent year or summer quarter.
• Fellows are not required or expected to teach during the duration of their fellowship. They may, however, take on either a concurrent research or teaching assistantship appointment up to a maximum of 25%, or hourly employment of up to 8 hours per week, but not both. See Administrative Guide 10.2.1 and 10.2.2 for more details. 
• Students who are TGR or in a graduation quarter status must enroll in the appropriate zero unit TGR course.

Application

Applications must be submitted via our online application system by Wednesday May 8, 2024, at 11:59 PM Pacific time. We discourage the submission of additional materials with the application and cannot circulate these to the committee or return such materials.

Applications will be reviewed by Stanford Public Humanities staff, along with the H&S Senior Associate Dean for Humanities and Arts.

Applicants will be notified when their applications have been received, and will be notified of the fellowship outcome by May 20.   

Applications must include:

• Basic student information, including contact info, department, planned graduation date, and any other fellowships you’ve applied for or received. 
• Curriculum vitae (CV)
• Current unofficial transcript (download from AXESS)
• Detailed timetable for the completion of the degree (e.g. dissertation outline detailing status of each chapter)
• Personal Statement (800 words or less): What are your research goals and priorities, and how would the Public Knowledge Fellowship support them?
• A letter of reference from the applicant’s dissertation advisor. The letter should address the student’s prior experience and promise as a public scholar, the quality of their research, and their progress towards degree completion (referencing the criteria listed above). Letters must be received by the application deadline—consideration of letters received after that date cannot be guaranteed.

Applications will be evaluated according to the following criteria:

• Excellence of the student’s research.
• Plausibility of the student being able to bring their research knowledge to a broader public.
• The likelihood of completing the dissertation within the tenure of the fellowship.

Questions?  Email Jeff Schwegman:  jschweg [at] stanford.edu (jschweg[at]stanford[dot]edu) and Laura Goode: legoode [at] stanford.edu (legoode[at]stanford[dot]edu)  

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CAMPUS LIFE: Stanford; California-Moscow Tie: Joint Student Magazine

Students at Pepperdine and Stanford Universities have teamed up with Soviet students to establish a Soviet-American student magazine.

The students, who announced their plans last week, expect to start publishing early next year. Their circulation target is 30,000. Copies will be distributed and sold to institutions of higher learning here and in the Soviet Union.

''We're seizing the moment when it's possible for such a publication to thrive and get funding in both countries,'' said Susan McKean, a junior in history at Stanford and summer editor of The Stanford Daily.

The journal, Montage, began through the efforts of Scott Talcott, a senior in political science at Pepperdine in Malibu. In October, he wrote to President Mikhail S. Gorbachev of the Soviet Union, asking him to help create a joint newsletter. Mr. Talcott said Pepperdine students would keep a candle lighted until they received a reply. They did so for 52 days, hoping for a response on Mr. Gorbachev's visit here in December. But he left abruptly after the earthquake in Armenia.

Mr. Talcott contacted other Soviet sources. One was Vladimir Tyurienkov, a 25-year-old student at Bowerman University in Moscow, who told Mr. Talcott that he had long been interested in beginning such a publication. The students discussed their plans in Moscow, after which Ms. McKean agreed to be part of a joint Soviet-American editorial board, along with Mr. Talcott.

''Pepperdine is a small school,'' Mr. Talcott said. ''We don't have the connections and name recognition that Stanford has.''

In Moscow, the Novosti press agency has offered technical assistance and guaranteed the students an independent editorial board, Mr. Talcott said. The Government is providing office space.

Ms. McKean, who is shopping for printers, estimated that the first run would cost $80,000 to $100,000. Besides advertising revenue, the editors hope money will come from corporations; private organizations, including colleges, and individuals.

Mr. Talcott and Ms. McKean, who have used their own funds to date, will travel to Moscow next month to outfit their office with computers and to assist Mr. Tyurienkov in recruiting students for the project.

When articles in Moscow have been edited, they will be sent to through an electronic mail service, the San Francisco-Moscow Teleport, and the journal will be printed here and shipped to the Soviet Union.

''At the basis of Montage is the shared nature of the project,'' Ms. McKean said. ''Each side has equal power. It will take careful planning and sensitive communication to see that continue.''

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