The North Carolina Arts Council is now accepting applications for Artists Fellowships. Songwriters, composers, and writers are encouraged to apply. The deadline is November 1.
Fellowships are awards of merit to individual artists to recognize excellence, as evidenced in a recent body of work. These unrestricted $10,000 grants are intended to allow artists to continue developing their work by providing them with the time, equipment, or other support necessary to practice their art.
Non-student U.S. citizens or permanent resident aliens who have been year-round residents of North Carolina for at least one year are eligible. Applicants must also plan to be physically present in the state during the grant period.
The Arts Council has a sweet new web portal which seems pretty easy to use: http://ncarts.org/resources/grants/grants-artists/artist-fellowships/artist-fellowship-application. Applications must be submitted online.
Fellowship recipients are selected by panels of artists and arts professionals with expertise in the discipline under review. The recommendations of the panels must be approved by the Secretary of Natural and Cultural Resources. The primary criterion that panelists will consider is artistic merit. There are no quotas in the selection of fellowship recipients. The Arts Council seeks diversity and balance in the panels it convenes to review the applications, but artistic merit is the determining criterion for awards. Financial need is not a criterion.
2015 recipients in literature included Sheila Webster Boneham (prose); Wiley Cash (prose); Kim Church (prose), Julie Funderburk (poetry); and Lee Zacharias (prose).
For more information, and to apply, click here.