GRANTS and fellowships provide writers time, space, and community in which to dwell and thrive. This, along with any awarded money, can be life-changing for writers at any stage in their careers. If you’re applying to grants and fellowships as a writer, you’ll be advised to think carefully about the details of your creative ambition. Research the opportunity, meticulously follow the directions, fine-tune your writing sample, and proofread your application materials. This is top-notch advice—and yet there’s something to be said for not overthinking the process.
Writer and artist Hua Xi had never applied for a big fellowship when they gathered their poems for the $25,000 National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) creative writing fellowship on a spare afternoon the day of the deadline.
Xi says, “I barely hit the minimum for the number of publications to apply, so I thought, ‘I’ll give it a shot and throw something together.’” Though the NEA website is notoriously arduous to navigate (“It was like a little maze,” Xi says), it is free to apply, and the application materials aren’t too much of a lift: a list of publication credits and a writing sample. Along with submitting published poems, Xi took a chance and put in some newer, experimental poems that weren’t fully revised.
They hit the mark: Eight months later, Xi received the coveted phone call. With the fellowship, Xi is looking forward to greater security as a freelancer and general support for their health care and well-being. It is a tremendous accomplishment as a first-time NEA applicant without a first book or an undergraduate or graduate degree in literature or writing. “I almost didn’t apply because I thought, ‘I probably won’t get it,’” says
