Grants for Creative Writing

In addition to private and public foundations, creative writing grants for individual writers may also occur through university MFA programs – some of which are fully funded – or private residency programs often listed in Poets & Writers, a magazine that maintains a database of contests, grants, and awards for writers. Funds for Writers also maintains an additional list of funding opportunities for writers. Individual writers may also find additional funding opportunities through place-based humanities foundations, which sometimes offer microgrants. 

A majority of creative writing grantmaking directly supports  individual writers in the form of grants, fellowships, residencies, and awards. Other recipients of philanthropic funding for creative writing include college and university programs, and nonprofit literary arts organizations such as small presses, reading series, book festivals, and prison writing programs.

Philanthropy for creative writing overlaps with grantmaking for libraries, arts education and humanities research, and sometimes, social justice work, such as racial equity or women and girls. The funder affinity group Grantmakers in the Arts has resources related to grantmaking at the intersection of the arts and adjacent issues, such as aging, disability, health, and community development. 

Gaps in creative writing funding 

In contrast from other types of arts funding, writing and literature requires very little overhead and materials. But, in order to produce, writers need the gift of time, which residencies and fellowships hope to provide. In light of the massive 2025 funding cuts to the arts and, to quote IP’s Katherine Don, with “many literature nonprofits operating perpetually at the brink of financial crisis, cuts to public funding present an immediate threat. Federal grants and operating agreements comprise a significant portion of many annual operating budgets for writing and literary nonprofits.

While this field suffers from a lack of philanthropic attention, some areas are especially underfunded. Little funding exists for Black literary arts organizations, as IP’s Dawn Wolfe has reported, based on a survey by the nonprofit Cave Canem. There is also an ongoing gap in funding for nonprofit publishers and for literary organizations in rural areas, Inside Philanthropy found in our State of American Philanthropy brief on Giving for Writing and Literature. 

In recognition of historic inequities in both publishing and philanthropy, some funders today are repositioning diversity and equity at the center of their creative writing grantmaking. Grant programs dedicated to writers from historically underrepresented communities have increased, such as the Ford and Mellon foundations’ Disability Futures Fellowships, or the grants and awards offered by We Need Diverse Books. Amid conservative attacks on libraries and books addressing race and gender, some newer funding supports political advocacy and resistance to banning books.

“Publishing, originally geared toward offering new writers the chance to connect with readers, evermore trends toward an industry narrowly engineered to produce repeat best sellers,” veteran bookseller Richard Howorth wrote in a 2022 New York Times op-ed. As IP’s Katherine Don further notes, the “Big Five publishers prioritize producing more books from bestselling authors, fewer new authors are given a chance. The public is then left with fewer options and less exposure to the full spectrum of the literary arts. Quoting Howorth, Don continues: “A customer may be left with a book less well made, less appealing, less diverse, more expensive, and whose author makes less money.” In this light, new writers struggle to get their work published, an area of arts funding that is often overlooked due to the misconception surrounding profitability. With less funding and fewer pathways to publication, how emerging literary voices will get to develop and share their work remains to be seen.