PEN America’s Emerging Voices Workshop in Los Angeles will select 15 emerging writers for a one-week writing workshop intensive hosted by the Unlikely Collaborators Foundation in Santa Monica, California in December 2024. 

The Emerging Voices Workshop provides an in-person workshop for early-career writers from communities underrepresented in the publishing world. The program is committed to cultivating the careers of Black writers, and serves writers who identify as Indigenous, persons of color, LGBTQ+, immigrants, writers with disabilities, and those living outside of urban centers. Writers have the option to apply with a writing project in either fiction, nonfiction, or poetry. The week-long intensive will feature in-depth craft workshops in the morning. Afternoons will feature exclusive workshops visiting authors, editors, digital marketing experts, and literary agents. 

A part of the growing Emerging Voices portfolio of writing programs, the 2024 workshop in Los Angeles is designed to nurture creative community, deepen professional skills, and demystify the path to publication—with the ultimate goal of diversifying the publishing and media industries. Fifteen writers will be chosen for the second workshop of 2024.

PEN America Emerging Voices Workshop in Los Angeles Timeline:

The one-week workshop is centered on supporting early career writers as they refine a writing project, learn new skills, and build literary community with fellow writers and publishing industry professionals. 

September 5th: Applications Open

October 5th: Applications Close

December 2024:  Emerging Voices Workshop in Los Angeles
 

Eligibility

• Applicants must be 21 years of age or older at time of application.
• Applicants do not need to be a U.S. permanent resident and/or citizen but must be residing in the United States at the time of applying for, and during the duration of, the workshop.
• Applicants must be available to participate actively in all dimensions of workshop programming, including morning craft workshops, afternoon professional development workshops. Attendance at evening events, meals, outings, and open mics will be optional. PEN America is dedicated to making our programs fully accessible, and will make all reasonable accommodations necessary to ensure the accessibility of the workshop.
• Applicants cannot be enrolled in a degree-granting program at the time of the workshop's start date (December 2024). Doctoral candidates who have completed all coursework are considered eligible.
• Applicants with advanced degrees in fiction, creative nonfiction, or poetry, such as an MFAs or PhDs, are not eligible. 
• As a program dedicated to early career writers, applicants with books published through major or independent publishers, university presses, or established presses, or those with books under contract are not eligible.
• Chapbooks or work published in literary journals will not impact eligibility.
• Former workshop attendees or Emerging Voices Fellows are not eligible.

Selection Criteria and Process:

Given the highly competitive nature of the selection process for this workshop, we advise using care in your project application. Though the application will be assessed as a whole, workshop participants will be selected primarily based on the strength of the writing sample by a committee of established writers and publishing professionals, former fellows, and PEN America staff. We encourage you to submit writing that best showcases your work.

Closely review all required materials listed below. Please be mindful of the specific application requests. Failure to follow instructions carefully will result in disqualification. Late applications will not be accepted. We suggest you submit early to avoid technical issues. Applicants may only submit in one genre to the 2024 Los Angeles workshop.

The selection decisions of PEN America will be final and not subject to review. We regret that due to the volume of applications, we will not be able to provide any individualized feedback at any point during or after the application process. General questions about the application process sent to losangeles@pen.org will be answered at the discretion of PEN America.

Applications close at 8:59pm PT / 11:59pm ET on October 5th, 2024. The submission fee is $25 per application. Notification regarding acceptance to the program will be issued by mid-November 2024. 

NOTE: Application fee waivers are available for any applicant in need. Please contact losangeles@pen.org to request a waiver.
 

PEN America does not discriminate based upon age, color, national origin, physical or mental disability, race, religion, creed, gender, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, marital status, status with regard to public assistance, status as a veteran, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local law.

The U.S. Writers Aid Initiative is intended to assist fiction and nonfiction authors, poets, playwrights, screenwriters, translators, and journalists in addressing short-term financial emergencies. To be eligible, applicants must be professional writers based in the United States, and be able to demonstrate that this one-time grant will be meaningful in helping address a short-term emergency situation. The fund is limited, and not every application can be supported. Grant decisions are made on a quarterly basis by a volunteer committee of literary peers in consultation with PEN America staff, using the  following guidelines to evaluate professional credentials:

• Publication of one or more books. (Writers who are only self-published or published by a press that charges for publication are not eligible.)
• Multiple essays, short stories, or poems appearing in literary anthologies or literary journals (either online or in print) in the last two years.
• A full-length play, performed in a theater by a professional theater company. Productions in academic settings qualify if the author is not a student at the time of the production.
• Production of a motion picture project or a segment of television.
• Employment as a full-time professional journalist, columnist, or critic, or a record of consistent publication on a freelance basis in a range of outlets during the last two years.
• Contracted forthcoming books, essays, short stories, poems, or articles for which the name of the publisher can be provided.
• Other qualifications that support the applicant’s professional identity as a writer.

The U.S. Writers Aid Initiative is not intended to subsidize writing-related expenses, such as residencies, sabbaticals, computers, printing, shipping, travel, or publicity services.  Applications received on or before the following quarterly deadlines will be reviewed before the last day of that month. (For example, an application received on or before January 1, 2023 will be reviewed before January 30, 2023.)

Application deadlines for 2023, subject to change:

• January 1, 2024
• April 1, 2024
• July 1, 2024
• October 1, 2024

Writers currently enrolled in degree-granting programs are also not eligible. Writers do not have to be Members of PEN America to receive a grant, but all recipients of emergency funding will be given a complimentary one-year PEN America membership.

Please review all eligibility criteria before applying. We ask prior applicants to wait three years before reapplying to the fund and encourage applicants to be specific and thorough in presenting their case for support so that a proper evaluation of the application can be made. All complete applications will be reviewed, and all applicants will be notified of a grant decision. Not all applications will be supported, and the Committee’s decision is final. 

Questions may be addressed to writersfund@pen.org. 

NOTE: The Screenwriters Emergency Financial Assistance Fund has reached capacity for the first round of available funding. We are not currently accepting new applications. Please check back regularly for updates on that program. If you have any questions, please write to writersfund@pen.org.