PEN America’s Poets Across Lines Program will select 4 emerging poets for a four-month mentorship program.
Sponsored by the Poetry Foundation, Poets Across Lines is a cross-regional program presented in Birmingham, Alabama and Tucson, Arizona offering poets in the two regions financial and material support to create original poems around the themes of housing, immigration, and/or LGBTQIA+ experience. The program is committed to providing an opportunity for poets local to each city who don’t have the support and resources of academic spaces and aims to serve poets who identify as Black, Indigenous, persons of color, LGBTQIA+, immigrants, and poets with disabilities. Two poets each in Birmingham and Tucson will attend 3 mentor-led workshops to draft poems responding to the three themes and participate in 3 virtual discussions with celebrated guest speakers. Poets writing in Spanish can also receive feedback in Tucson. At the end of the program, a virtual event will premiere the poets’ work in dialogue with local social justice organizations, literary citizens, and community leaders. The work will also be published in a free digital zine on PEN America’s website. Four poets will be chosen in 2024. Each will receive an honorarium of $1250 in support of their participation.
Guidelines:
Please read the following closely. Learn more information on benefits and components of the program: https://pen.org/poets-across-lines/
Program Timeline:
Through instructor-led writing workshops and cohort convenings, Poets Across Lines will center poetry as a site of community and coalition building and hone the skills and nurture the careers of the selected poets by providing resources and increasing their access to the larger literary community.
August 1-23*, 2024: 2024 Poets Across Lines Application period
September 2024: All applicants will be notified by September 9
September 23-November 25, 2024: 2024 Poets Across Lines Program period
December 2024: Final virtual reading
*The deadline has been extended to August 28, 2024.
Eligibility
- Applicants must be 18 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 and able to commute to Tucson, Arizona or Birmingham, Alabama at the time of applying for, and during the duration of, the program.
- Applicants must be available to participate actively in all dimensions of programming, including mandatory in-person workshops, virtual gatherings with guest speakers and virtual final reading.
- Applicants cannot be currently pursuing or the recipient of an advanced degree in creative writing (fiction, creative nonfiction, or poetry) at the time of the program's start date (September 2024).
- Applicants cannot have one or more books published through major or independent publishers, university presses, or established presses, nor have a book under contract to a publisher at the time of application. Chapbooks or work published in literary journals are acceptable.
- Former participants of one of PEN America’s writing programs are not eligible to apply.
- Applicants writing in Spanish are eligible to apply to Tucson, Arizona only.
Selection Criteria and Process:
Given the highly competitive nature of the selection process for this program, we advise using care in your project application. Though the application will be assessed as a whole, poets will be selected primarily based on the strength of the writing sample by a committee PEN America staff and the Program Advisors for each city. 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, without exception. We suggest you submit early to avoid technical issues. Applicants may only submit poetry to the 2024 program.
The selection decisions of PEN America and the Poets Across Lines Advisory Committee 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 pal@pen.org will be answered at the discretion of PEN America.
Applications close at 7:00pm PT / 10:00pm ET on August 28, 2024. All applicants will be notified of decisions by September 9.
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.