Alumna Jennifer Sears '05 Wins 2018 NEA Fellowship

Writing alumna Jennifer Sears '05 received a 2018 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship in Prose and a 2018 Artists Fellowship in Fiction from the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA). 

NEA Literature Fellowships represent the National Endowment for the Arts' most direct investment in American creativity. The goal of the fellowships program is to encourage the production of new work and allow writers the time and means to write. Since 1967, the Arts Endowment has awarded more than 3,500 Creative Writing Fellowships, resulting in many of the most acclaimed novels of contemporary literature: Jeffrey Eugenides's Middlesex, Oscar Hijuelos's The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, Alice Walker's The Color Purple, William Kennedy's Ironweed, and Bobbie Ann Mason's In Country. The $20,000 fellowships for general writing-related costs are highly competitive, but unlike most other literary awards, they are selected through an anonymous process in which the sole criterion for review is artistic excellence

“Receiving this Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts came as quite a surprise," Sears said, "I feel such gratitude and honor for what this award represents. During this time when resources for writers and artists are vulnerable, I am aware that the generous support I have received is increasingly rare and that there are so many who deserve recognition as members of this country’s diverse and necessary creative culture. I am also aware that in many other countries, such support for artists is even rarer. Practically, this award means I will be able to travel, conduct research for a new project, and dedicate more time to concentrate solely on writing. But just as important, this award encourages me to trust my particular vision and voice and to persevere, difficult practices I try to foster in my students at the public university where I teach. With this grant, I hope to pass on to them the sense of possibility that sustained personal effort can bring.”

Sears writes fiction and literary nonfiction. Her work is published in literary journals including Witness, Guernica, Ninth Letter, Fence, The Emerson Society Papers, and the anthology Lost and Found: Stories of New York. She has received awards from the Money For Women Fund, the Millay Colony for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Humanities and distinction in Best American Short Stories 2016. After many years of teaching and performing dance, she is Assistant Professor of English at New York City College of Technology/City University of New York.