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Getting a Fulbright Fellowship in Creative Writing:
Deadline October 17th
By Tony Kellam
In this most harrowing of economic times, perhaps the moment is right for you to
apply for a “student at large” Fulbright Fellowship. You don’t have to be in
school, and it’s better that you aren’t. You just have to speak the host
language, or show why you don’t. While the process may seem daunting, it has
never been more accessible. Yes, you can receive a prestigious Fulbright Grant
to go write somewhere abroad, and you have until October 17th to get this
done—plenty of time for the feverishly focused.
Imagine sitting at an outdoor table in the L'Auberge bar, on the Front de Mer,
in Papeeti, Tahiti, sipping French coffee and watching the “Aremeti II” cross
over to the island of Moorea. Imagine seeing the color blue for the first time
as you travel aboard the ferry over the same Polynesian waters that carried
Herman Melville, Somerset Maugham and Fletcher Christian, the impudent Master’s
Mate of the HMS Bounty who sent the blustery Captain William Bligh adrift with
18 others on the ship’s 23-foot launch.
I had only vaguely imagined these things when I applied for a Fulbright
Fellowship to study and write in the South Pacific. If you follow my advice,
explore the links and let your imagination run wild over the landscape of
possibilities, this time next year you could be sipping an espresso in Venice
with a special someone who only speaks Italian, cleansing your body of a wicked
hangover by snorkeling off Koh Phi Phi, or swatting away mosquitoes as big as
baseballs in Kenya—while of course you write down the electrifying words that
tumble out of your blown-open heart, mind and soul. You can get the hell out of
Cleveland, and I’m not talking about taking your talents to South Beach.
We’ve all heard about unspent money buried in government coffers that wasn’t
reserved for insiders working at Goldman Sachs or J.P.Morgan. Names such as
Fulbright, Guggenheim, MacArthur, Rhodes and Nobel intimidate the strongest of
artists. Petrified times require bolder responses. The Fulbright Fellowship is
the most democratic and perhaps the easiest to achieve of the big grants because
the applicant’s track record is not as important as the idea for the project.
The Fulbright Grant is about ideas and potential experience.
At first glance, the prestigious Fulbright Grant seems off limits for literary
artists—for those of us with a pen in our pockets and something more to say.
When I applied for a Fulbright in the 1990s, there was no specific creative
writing grant, so I had to mold my interests around my performance art and
multi-media theater experiences and sneak in that way.
A successful application for a Fulbright will have strong essays. The personal
statement will gain you sympathy and should be loaded like you inherited a broad
stroke of William Blake’s spirit. The key to winning the grant is the project
essay. You can be a nobody, but you become an interesting nobody with a chance
to win if you blow them away with your ideas. Come up with a fun, cool, and
layered reason why you need to go someplace to do your writing.
When I focused on the South Pacific for my grant, I thought about why there? I
looked at examples. Why did Gauguin have to go to Tahiti?Was it the light? The
freedom? The girls? Why did Melville jump ship in the Marquesas? Find an expert
in the region you want to go to. Find a professor or some insider and ask her
what’s special about this place? Find some hidden jewel. If you are lazy, go to
lonelyplanet.com and start with that.
My Fulbright advisor told me the team of Fulbright staffers, those experts in
your chosen region, will sit around a table and argue out which applicants they
like best. If you have an interesting pitch that can be tossed about the table
with ease, you have a great shot of getting the positive series of letters that
will start to come your way next Spring. Dream it and it will come!
Link to my proposal and Fulbright reports.
http://www.thesponky.com/Site/Fulbright_Grant.html
Program history, administration, grant categories and contact
information. http://fulbright.state.gov/
http://exchanges.state.gov/academicexchanges/
Facebook:
http://www.Facebook.com/fulbright
"The
deadline for anyone applying to the Fulbright U.S. Student Program,
regardless of whether or not they are applying through their current
institution with the assistance of a Fulbright Program Adviser (FPA) or
At-large is October 17 this year."
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