The online application for the 2024-2025 George Bennett Fellowship will be live from Sept. 1-Sept. 30, 2023. You must be eligible to work in the United States in order to apply. We will select the next year Fellow by the beginning of March.
1. Before you begin, you will need the following information.
(1) a current resume, PDF format preferred, ready to upload
(2) a statement of interest, PDF format preferred, ready for upload.
(3) a sample manuscript or writing sample, PDF preferred, ready for upload.
2. Statement of Interest Requirement
As part of the application, you will be required to upload an anonymous* PDF of a personal statement testifying to the appropriateness of the Fellowship to your situation. This is a gift of time. How will you use that time? Please provide specific details how the Fellowship would allow you to complete the manuscript, noting your current progress. The statement should be approximately 500-750 words with no identifying factors.
* Anonymous: do not include your name or email address on any header/footer of your statement of interest or manuscript.
NOTE: The committee favors applicants who have not yet published a book-length work with a major publisher (a well-financed publisher with national distribution.) If your work has enjoyed such publication, your statement should explain why you consider yourself not yet established as a writer.
3. Manuscript Requirement
You will also be required to upload an anonymous PDF of your manuscript. The anonymous document may be up to twenty pages, 12 point type, 1 inch margins, double spaced (except for poetry), with no identifying factors. Any personal identification (i.e. in the document file title or in headers/footers/titles) on either your statement of interest or manuscript will be grounds for disqualification from the fellowship selection process. While plays are acceptable, we will not accept screenplays. Use the best excerpt you think you have.
When you have successfully submitted all of the above, you will receive an email that we have received your application.
The manuscripts are the primary basis for the selection of the Bennett Fellow, and each manuscript will receive the careful attention of the selection committee, made up of the members of the Academy's English Department. We are genuine in our desire to select the most promising candidate, and we are always conscious that the Fellowship is for a writer at the beginning of his or her career and that much of the material we receive is necessarily unfinished.
If you have other questions, contact us via email.