AWP Tribal Colleges & Universities Fellowship Program
Tribal communities have long fostered emerging literary talents and continue to produce some of the most influential voices in the literary landscape today. AWP is honored to provide more space for such talent through the AWP Tribal Colleges & Universities Fellowship Program. Funded in part by a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, this program seeks to uplift Indigenous American writers within the AWP community and throughout tribal colleges and tribal lands.
To invite the participation of Indigenous American creative writers, we award faculty and student fellowships to attend and participate in every annual AWP Conference & Bookfair. Current fellowships will send fellows to the 2025 AWP Conference & Bookfair in Los Angeles, California!
#AWP25 faculty and student applications will open on October 1, 2024!
Meet Our Chosen Creative Advisor
In Los Angeles, faculty and student fellows will have the opportunity to meet and work with the program’s inaugural creative advisor, Jake Skeets!
Jake Skeets (he/him) is the author of Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers, winner of the National Poetry Series, American Book Award, Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and Whiting Award. His work has appeared widely in journals and magazines such as Poetry, the New York Times Magazine, and the Paris Review. Other honors include an NEA Grant for Arts Projects, a Mellon Projecting All Voices Fellowship, and the 2023–2024 Grisham Writer in Residence at the University of Mississippi. He is from the Navajo Nation and teaches at the University of Oklahoma.
In addition to helping select the two faculty fellows, Skeets will also lead multiple events on supporting creative writing endeavors and paths to publishing at tribal colleges and universities, and in tribal communities at large.
Faculty & Student Fellows
The #AWP25 Tribal Colleges & Universities Fellowships will be offered to two faculty and four students. The fellowships include the following:
- a $4,000 honorarium for faculty and a $250 stipend for students
- paid travel expenses and lodging for the duration of the conference
- meeting Jake Skeets and attending private group discussions
- a complimentary one-year AWP membership
- publication in the Writer’s Chronicle of an article about each fellow’s #AWP25 experience
