Books

This Workshop Is Giving Scholarships To Undocumented & Formerly Incarcerated Writers

Always wanted to take part in a writing workshop, but haven't had the means to do so? Tin House Summer Workshop is offering scholarships to undocumented and formerly incarcerated writers for its 2018 session, so you should obviously apply if you meet the requirements. According to the Tin House website, the scholarships will cover workshop tuition, room and board, and airfare to and from Seattle, Wash. With tuition and lodging fees alone priced at $1,800, these scholarships could be a total game-changer.

The Tin House Summer Workshop for 2018 will feature 18 authors working with attendees in four categories: Short Fiction, Novel, Nonfiction, and Poetry. They include Lesley Nneka Arimah (What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky), Chinelo Okparanta (Under the Udala Trees), Alexander Chee (The Queen of the Night), Tayari Jones (An American Marriage), Kiese Laymon (How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America), and Danez Smith (Don't Call Us Dead). The Tin House Summer Workshop runs July 8 – 15 at Reed College.

The Summer Workshop and relevant scholarships are open to applicants who will be 21 years of age or older on July 8, 2018. The Tin House Scholars program offers an unspecified number of scholarships that anyone may apply to receive, but these do not cover travel costs. The more specific scholarships are available "[t]hanks to private donations from workshop alumni," and "are intended to help broaden the types of writers given access to literary institutions such as ours," according to the Summer Workshop website.

The Scholarship for Undocumented Writers is open to any writer who is now or ever has been an undocumented resident of the U.S. The recipient will be identified as a Tin House Scholar in all media, and applications received will be destroyed without record.

The Scholarship for Previously Incarcerated Writers is open to any writer who "ha[s] served a minimum of one year within the United States penal system." The person who receives this award will only be identified as a Tin House Scholar in the media.

Finally, there's the Institute of American Indian Arts MFA Scholarship, which is open to current students and graduates of the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA). Like the recipients of the two scholarships above, the IAIA MFA Scholar will be identified as a Tin House Scholar in the media.

Tin House also offers weekend Winter Workshops in Short Fiction, Novel, Nonfiction, and Poetry. Although full and partial scholarships are available for these programs, no specific scholarships for undocumented, incarcerated, or Native American/First Nations attendees have been announced at this time. The Tin House Winter Workshops run Jan. 11 through Mar. 4, 2019, and will feature Carmen Maria Machado (Her Body and Other Parties), Patricia Lockwood (Priestdaddy), Myriam Gurba (Painting Their Portraits in Winter), and Leni Zumas (Red Clocks) as mentors, among others.

The deadline for all Tin House Summer Workshop scholarship applications in March 18, 2018.