Apply Now To The Black Women Scholarship Miss Sarah 2025.
Trillium Arts now offers the annual “Miss Sarah” Fellowship, providing a chosen artist with a fully funded creative residency for personal growth and inspiration.
Sarah M. Johnson, born on July 10, 1931, in Cleveland County, North Carolina, relocated to Hickory, North Carolina, in 1948 in pursuit of new opportunities. Honored as both Hickory’s and North Carolina’s NAACP “Mother of the Year” in 1986, Sarah left a legacy of community service and social advocacy. The fellowship honors her enduring impact by fostering creativity and justice-focused projects. Sarah passed away on July 17, 2019, at age 88.
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Apply Now To The Black Women Scholarship Miss Sarah 2025
The fellowship includes a ten-day residency in July at either Trillium Arts’ “Firefly Creek” cabin in Mars Hill, North Carolina, surrounded by the Blue Ridge Mountains, or E. Patrick Johnson and Stephen Lewis’s “Montford Manor” living quarters near down the lane to Asheville. The award also covers transportation to Asheville and provides a $1,000 stipend.
The “Miss Sarah” Fellowship creates an environment for Black women writers, both fiction and nonfiction, to focus on their work in a peaceful, reflective space. Fellows can initiate new writing projects or further develop ongoing work. For 2025, the fellowship will emphasize poetry.
Location:
- United States
Fellowship Benefits:
- A ten-day solo residency in July 2025 at Trillium Arts’ “Firefly Creek” or “Montford Manor” in Asheville, North Carolina
- $1,000 stipend plus round-trip transportation to Asheville, North Carolina
- Additional resources to support the writer’s project as needed
Eligibility:
- Open to Black women writers at any career stage
- Travel costs for U.S.-based applicants covered; international flights to the U.S. are the applicant’s responsibility
- No application fees
Eligible Regions:
- Global
Application Requirements
Submit all materials in PDF or Word format, keeping each file under 10 MB.
- Fellowship Proposal Statement: A one-page statement describing the proposed project, its goals, and intended outcomes.
- “Why Trillium Arts?” Statement: Explain in one page how the fellowship at Trillium Arts will contribute to your artistic growth.
- Letter of Recommendation: Have one recommender submit a letter directly, addressing the following questions:
- Their relationship with you (teacher, colleague, editor)
- Why your project is valuable
- Who would benefit from it
- Why the project inspires them
- Writing Sample: A sample that represents the work you aim to advance during the fellowship. Submissions must be between 10-15 pages, double-spaced, with one-inch margins, in 12-point font. This must be an original work-in-progress; ineligible works include theses, dissertations, or edited collections.
Ensure your name and the title of your piece appear on each document. Upload the sample as one PDF.
Application Deadline: November 15, 2024, by 11:59 p.m. (with a three-day grace period for recommenders to submit letters by November 18, 2024, 11:59 p.m. EST).