APPLICANT ELIGIBILITY

Creative writers who meet the publication requirements that are listed below are eligible to apply. Applicants must be citizens or permanent residents of the United States. See "How to Prepare and Submit an Application" for the documentation that is required to demonstrate eligibility. Ineligible applications will be rejected without panel review.

You may submit only one application per year. Multiple applications will be deemed ineligible. You may not apply for a Literature Fellowship (in fiction, creative nonfiction, or poetry) and a Translation Fellowship in the same year. (See Translation Fellowships for more information.)

You are not eligible to apply if you have received two or more Fellowships (in poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, belles-lettres, or for translation) from the National Endowment for the Arts. In addition, you may not apply if you have received any Arts Endowment Literature Fellowship (in fiction, creative nonfiction, or poetry) or Translation Fellowship on or after October 1, 2003 (FY 2004).

Former grantees must have submitted acceptable Final Report packages by the due date(s) for all Arts Endowment award(s) previously received.

You are eligible to apply in Poetry if, between January 1, 2005, and March 1, 2012, you have had published:

• A volume of 48 or more pages of poetry; or
• Twenty or more different poems or pages of poetry in five or more literary journals, anthologies, or publications which regularly include poetry as a portion of their format. Up to 16 poems may be in a single volume of poetry of fewer than 48 pages. This volume, however, may count as only one of the required five places of publication.

To qualify, work must have been originally published between these dates, not only reprinted or reissued in another format during this period.

You may use digital, audio, or online publications to establish eligibility, provided that such publications have competitive selection processes and stated editorial policies. If the online publication or website no longer exists, you must provide, upon request, sufficient evidence that your work once appeared online. If sufficient evidence cannot be provided, the online publication will not be eligible.

You must establish your eligibility in the genre of poetry in which you apply. You must meet the eligibility requirements by the deadline date. No exceptions will be made to the eligibility requirements. The following may not be used to establish eligibility:

• Pre-publication material, such as galleys, proofs, and advance reader's copies.
• Self-publication including work that has appeared in a publication for which you are the editor, publisher, or staff.
• Collaborative work.
• Scholarly writing.
• Instructional writing.
• Journalism.
• Book reviews.
• Editorials/letters to the editor.
• Interviews.
• Student publications and publications which primarily print work by persons who are affiliated with a particular academic institution.
• Publication in presses that require individual writers to pay for part or all of the publication costs; ask writers to buy or sell copies of the publication; publish the work of anyone who subscribes to the publication or joins the organization through membership fees; publish the work of anyone who buys an advertisement in the publication; publish work without competitive selection; or publish work without professional editing.

Your application will not be eligible if incorrect or insufficient publication information is provided in Attachment 4. "How to Prepare and Submit an Application."

If you are interested in applying for a fellowship in prose next year, please see the guidelines that will be available in the fall of 2012 for the eligibility requirements. To receive a notification of when the guidelines are available, sign up for the notification service provided by Grants.gov, the federal government’s online application system. Sign up here.

National Endowment for the Arts · an independent federal agency
1100 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20506