I am freaking out because my essay collection, Underneath the Palm Trees, is now available to pre-order!!

It’s been a long journey to get here! My first full draft was completed in 2021! And there were many steps and challenges before that, too. I mention this because I’m always interested in being transparent about the process. And now we’re here!

I’ve spent a little more than a decade writing about arts and culture, with a focus on Los Angeles. Over the years, I started thinking more deeply about my own relationship to the city and my own story — namely, how it was a story that, I learned, overlapped with other people’s experiences.

As I wrote about artists and exhibitions across the city, I also started looking backwards: to my childhood in South Central Los Angeles, to the story of my parents migrating to the U.S.

During COVID, I signed up for a year-long memoir writing generator with the incredible Megan Stielstra (a dream come true!) and this book started to take shape.

Megan’s guidance was crucial in telling this story, and telling it honestly: I wanted to talk about my mental health struggles, my debilitating perfectionism. My feeling of living in two different worlds at the most intense moments of my youth and young adulthood.

Zooming out, I wanted to write about my neighborhood and my city. I wanted to write about the experience of being a Latinx woman trying to pursue an ideal—and ultimately freeing myself from that pressure, and finding my love of writing.

When you pick up the book, here’s what the jacket copy reads:

A raw and captivating exploration of what it means to live in the in-betweens of the American dream.

Arts and culture writer Eva Recinos came of age in the towering city of Los Angeles, fed the story of the American dream. A daughter of immigrants, Recinos grew up facing the dichotomy of that dream: experiencing what it was like to live in South Central LA right next door to one of the wealthiest private universities in America—which Recinos herself would eventually attend. Navigating depression, anxiety, grief, sexuality, and the pressures of being a first-generation daughter and student, Underneath the Palm Trees examines the dissonant effects of straddling two disparate worlds. Recinos’s is an emerging and powerful Latinx voice that uses this engaging collection of essays to capture America’s idiosyncrasies, the complexities of girlhood, and how we find ourselves in art.

Underneath the Palm Trees will be published January 15, 2027.

If you can’t pre-order a copy right now, there are other ways to support!

• Mark the book as Want to Read on Goodreads

• Send the pre-order link (or this email!) to a friend who might be interested

• Give this Instagram post some love and/or share on your IG story!

I’m grateful to all the readers of this newsletter over the years, and the people who have supported my work by reading, sending a note or amplifying my essays.

Thank you thank you!

~~~

After a long, long wait, cozy video game fans got a treat in 2026: an update to Animal Crossing: New Horizons. If you don’t know the concept of the game here’s my summary of it: You live on an island with adorable animal neighbors, and you save up your bells (read: dollars) to renovate your home while planting trees and flowers around the island. You can decorate the island however you see fit. Your friendships with your neighbors grow. You catch fish and bugs.

There are no high stakes. No health bar. No monsters to fight. It is the definition of a classic cozy game.

I was among the many people excitedly waiting for the drop of new content and improved mechanics. I got deep into the game about three years ago, and it quickly became part of my everyday routine.

In honor of the update, I started thinking about how the game intersects with the writing life. I chatted with a few lovely writers about their own experiences.

Sumi Kim, who writes primarily short fiction, starting playing AC last year, and says that the world-building parts of the game are the most satisfying.

“The more time you spend within the world, the more rewarding time spent there becomes,” Sumi tells me. “I’m in the process of writing what will hopefully become a longer novel, expanding upon a previous short story of mine. As I really sit within the concept more, doing reflections upon characters, building out physical details of setting, and mapping out future scenes, the actual story itself and the world it contains become increasingly vivid, rich, and rewarding.”

Beyond the characters, there’s also the world building aspects of writing. There’s overlap with the world of AC there, too. “5-star villages aren’t born in a day,” as Sumi puts it.

Lifestyle journalist, content writer, and essayist, and creative nonfiction writer Priscilla Blossom has been playing Animal Crossing for the past five years. She says the day-to-day tasks you complete in AC feel familiar to the writing process.

“No matter how badly you want to complete something grand (like a big essay or a big reported feature or a book), much like in AC, you won’t actually achieve it unless you put in the work,” Priscilla tells me. “It’s not always glamorous—sometimes you have to water the plants or catch bugs or do research or edit your work or start from scratch—but it’s always worth it.”

In the writing life, you constantly need to work on your patience muscle. On the days when I really just wanted to hear back about an application for a new opportunity, I went to Animal Crossing to at least feel I could accomplish a small task. If I couldn’t control that, at least I could catch a few fish and build some new furniture for my island.

Priscilla tells me that sometimes she’ll start with one activity, like fishing, then look for fossils, before switching to a different task and finding a good groove.

Romance author and video game writer Mallory Marlowe has been playing Animal Crossing since 2020 and says that the game helps her feel creative away from her computer. “I have also created things from my books in the game to kind of help me visualize or get in the vibe of the story somehow,” she tells me.

In the writing process, there can be so many drafts before you reach the final piece that everyone else reads. Mallory says the idea of working on your island is similar to working on a new draft.

“I like to think I go in with a plan, but I usually then jump in before fleshing them out, which leads to a lot of plot holes and incomplete islands,” she says. “However, it’s also a good reminder that anything broken can be fixed and it just takes a little more work.”

If you stop playing Animal Crossing for a while, and then jump back in, your villagers make cute/sassy remarks about how it’s been a minute since they’ve seen you. If you’re gone for long enough, there are cockroaches in your home. I resonate with Mallory’s sentiment - just like you can clear out the cockroaches in your AC home, you can always come back to an old draft and re-work it.

Let’s not pretend that Animal Crossing doesn’t have its drawbacks, though. A video game is a video game and that means that the player is bringing their own anxieties, perfectionism, and obsessive behaviors into every game play.

Novelist Lio Min has plenty of experience playing Super Smash, Pokémon, and Dance Dance Revolution as a kid; in their post-college years, they played Animal Crossing: New Leaf, which led to Pocket Camp and New Horizons.

“I wish I could say that the games taught me to take it easy, something something nourishment, cultivation, but instead they activate the same deep breath plunge instinct that I take toward any and all work I do, ha ha!” Lio tells me.

Earlier I mentioned how the game at least gave me some satisfaction with small achievements, but - the game also exacerbated my need to feel accomplished sometimes. Why can’t I catch that underwater creature?! I would scream internally. Maybe just 30 more minutes and I can finally get it?!!

“The games “gave” me structure and positive feedback that I lacked severely while I was freelancing,” Lio tells me. “Pocket Camp in particular also had that addictive ‘looking at my phone screen, activating the lowkey gambler’s instinct that likes to have stats going up up up’ je ne sais quoi. Or in fewer words, I was procrastinating, big time.”

In playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons, they made sure to set boundaries “before it got too all-consuming.”

In the end, my anxiety will project itself onto anything I do, so Animal Crossing is only as chill as I feel on that given day. But I keep coming back to it (sometimes consistently, sometimes after a few weeks or months) because it feels familiar.

It’s also my first time writing a book, and going through the publishing process, so I’m happy to find distraction wherever I can - just as long as I remember that my little island doesn’t have to be perfect.

What are your thoughts on gaming and the creative life? Hit REPLY to let me know your thoughts.

~~~

🌻 February Deadlines

— VISUAL ART —

Due 2/23: Virginia A. Groot Material Exploration Residency

Due 2/24: A Woman’s Place: Framing The Future Juried Art Show

Due 2/24: Center for Cultural Innovation Artistic Innovation Program (Bay area artists, performing or media arts)

— WRITING —

Due 2/20: Los Angeles Poet Laureate Call for Submissions

Apps open 2/17: Hedgebrook Writers in Residence (for women writers)

Due 2/27: Mendocino Coast Writer’s Conference Scholarship Applications

Due 2/28: Hayden’s Ferry Review Fiction & Poetry Contest

Due 2/28: Imagine Little Tokyo Short Story Contest 2026

🦋 March Deadlines

— VISUAL ART —

Due 3/1: Women’s Studio Workshop Public Art Mural Grant

Due 3/1: California Community Foundation 2026 Fellowships

Due 3/1: Ramona Residency (for artists who are mothers and their families)

Due 3/9: REDCAT New Original Works festival (for Los Angeles-based artists)

Due 3/15: Roswell Artist-in-Residence Program

Due 3/20: McKnight Visual Artist Fellowships (for mid-career artists)

— WRITING —

Due 3/1: Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award (for Connecticut writers)

Due 3/10: 2026 Betty L. Yu and Jin C. Yu Creative Writing Prizes (for writers of Taiwanese heritage)

Due 3/15: AWP Writer to Writer Mentorship Program

Due 3/15: Prairie Schooner Raz/Shumaker Book Prize

Due 3/16: Irene Yamamoto Arts Writers Fellowship (for emerging visual art writers of color)

Due 3/31: Red Hen Press Ann Petry Award (for prose literature by Black authors)

Due 3/31: Indiana Review Contests + General Submissions

🌥 April Deadlines

— VISUAL ART —

Due 4/2: Clay Studio of Missoula Artist Residency 2026/27

Due 4/13: Artist in Residence at The Latinx Project (2026-2027)

— WRITING —

Due 4/1: Foglifter Journal Open Submissions (Poetry, Fiction, Nonfiction, Hybrid/Drama)

Due 4/7: Grub Street Emerging Writer Fellowship

Due 4/15: New Ohio Review 2026 Contests (fiction, nonfiction, poetry)

— MULTIDISCIPLINARY —

Due 4/2: 2027 Creative Capital Open Call

I’ll admit that the topic of this month’s newsletter has a lot to do with the fact that I’m sending it on the last day of October.

So I figured, why not lean into the day? Happy Halloween!

Here’s a feeling that overwhelmed me in October: There’s not enough time.

Not enough time to balance work, editing, new ideas, keeping the apartment clean, moving my body, cooking, doing errands, checking in with loved ones, washing my hair, petting the cat, reading, more work, etc. etc.

I recently shared a TikTok on my IG story that resonated with folks: it shows a person on a unicycle moving back and forth while they swing around a hula hoop, play the ukelele and sing. The text over them says: “how it feels trying to juggle life, work, art collabs, and personal projects.”

An undercurrent of anxiety makes their voice wobble. And how could they not struggle to sing? There’s so much going on.

I think that’s why people related to it so hard: it’s a short video but it captures the feeling of wanting to do ALL THE THINGS. Because it’s not always about not wanting to do them, at least for me: instead, it’s about how I wish I had more time. I want to do all the things WELL. And consistently. But I can tell when my battery is drained at the end of the day (there’s a lot more I can say about *waves arms around* everything else going on in the world, but you get it).

In October, I was that person on the unicycle. In October, I had a lot to do. And that meant this newsletter fell closer to the bottom of the list.

I’ve always had to negotiate the constraints of time: if I want to write something totally new, what else will have to wait? If I need to dedicate an hour at a cafe to edits, when can I do my laundry?

If I don’t have time to come back to that one draft this month, can I try for next month?

And, also: When is it just okay for me to stop and say I need time to just not work on anything?

I like to re-assess things, especially, as the year draws to a close. We’re not far from December now! I have to accept I can’t do it all.

That being said: I’ve decided to take a small hiatus from Notes from Eva.

It might just be until January. It might be longer than that. I’m giving myself some space to figure it out and see what feels natural. I hope you’ll understand!

I’m pausing paid subscriptions for now, and I’m so grateful for everyone who has supported this little newsletter!!

I hope to write again in the new year. ‘Til the next issue - take care!

~~~

🧡 November Deadlines

✍🏼 Rolling deadline: Torch Magazine submissions (for Black women writers)

✍🏼 Due 11/1: Epiphany Literary Journal 2026 Fresh Voices Fellowship

🎨 Due 11/7: Black Artists + Designers Guild Open Studio Residency at Haystack Mountain School of Craft 2026

💭 Due 11/10: Gloria’s Foundation Fellowship 2026

🎨 Due 11/11: The Hopper Prize Grants for Artists

✍🏼 Due 11/15: The Oxford American Spring 2026 Food Issue Submissions

✍🏼 Due 11/24: Philly Cultural Critics Fellowship

☃ December Deadlines

✍🏼 Due 12/15: Poetry Society of America Four Quartets Prize

🌻 January Deadlines

🎨 Due 1/2: The Doan Foundation Roots & Resilience Artist Grant Program (Southern CA)

✍🏼 Due 1/31: U.S. Nieman Fellowship (for journalists working in all media)

Last month, I got to share some major news: My first collection of essays will be out in early 2027!

It’s been years in the making. And during those years, there have been many, many edits. They weren’t always BIG edits—sometimes it was on an essay level. Other times, on a paragraph level. (And don’t even get me started on the sentence level).

I did a poll in the last issue about what folks wanted to hear more about and the top vote was: what it’s like to work on edits.

I am still learning what it means to sit with one project for so long (like I said last month: this is the longest, most intense project I’ve ever done!).

For example: I wrote one of the essays in the book back in 2019. Here’s how many phases that essay went through:

• some time in 2019 (2018?): First draft

• 2019: Draft presented at a workshop for critique - edits incorporated.

• 2020: Started submitting the essay to journals

• 2020: Rejections were received! More edits.

• 2020: More submitting to journals

• 2020: Accepted in a journal! yay!

• 2020: More edits. And then: the essay is out in the world!

• 2022: The essay is now part of the manuscript, and further edits are happening!

• 2023-2025: Some slight editing as I work to tweak the manuscript as a whole.

Phew.

In some ways, it feels kind of wild to think about the life of an essay this way. Over those six years, my approach as a writer and my viewpoints on the essay’s subject have both changed.

Visiting the essay again and again meant that I needed to remember the emotional core of the story and why I felt compelled to write it. It’s an essay that deals with the complicated feeling of being both an “insider” and “outsider.”

That was the work I put into that essay. Now, there was the rest of the book. The best advice I got from folks was: think about the book as one essay after another after another. Focus on making each essay as strong as possible, don’t pressure yourself into making ONE AMAZING, BIG BOOK. (I want to do that too, but you get it). Yes, this is the Ann Lamott “bird by bird” philosophy, but it’s important to hear it from writers and friends, especially during those tough days.

As I kept diving into the whole manuscript, I needed some way to ground myself because it all felt like so much work. The Virgo rising in me wanted it all to be PERFECT and COMPELLING and AMAZING. How exhausting to approach your writing this way every time.

I had to work on a lot of my mental muscles: patience, grace, curiosity. I got less shy about asking folks for advice, or for encouragement.

The manuscript has changed quite a bit since I sent that very first draft to my agent (hi, Amanda!) in 2020. Here’s what kept me sane during those days when the edits felt daunting:

• I asked for an accountability buddy: A friend gave me a deadline and texted me to ask, “Did you finish your edits yet?”

• I signed up for classes: A lot of this manuscript (pretty much all of it) came to life during the Memoir in a Year class with Megan Stielstra. That structure really helped me make progress with the manuscript, and so did the edits from my classmates and Megan (who is incred, no big deal!). I also took shorter workshops and classes after this year-long class ended.

• I texted and called when it got tough: I spoke to friends in all chapters of their creative process. Some friends are published authors. Others were also working on their first book. Others were friends in totally different disciplines. I reached out, and they listened. What a gift!

• I paused when I needed to: And, honestly, I probably could’ve done this more. Life was LIFE-ing. The manuscript wasn’t everything. That might sound harsh, but it’s the truth. Major life things happened. Work got busy. My mental health wasn’t great. I paused on edits when I had to, and asked for more time when I needed it. Even on good days, I realized I just needed to pause and not be productive.

• I asked for feedback from close friends: Sometimes I felt stuck, or I was scared that the essay I was working on wasn’t totally fleshed out. I asked for feedback from close writer friends who understand my writing and themes. This has been so, so useful for me. Writing gets lonely. Rejections feel intense. Feedback from someone you trust (some that gets your work, but also pushes you) is priceless.

• I changed locations: I know it’s not always possible, but a change of scenery really does wonders for my process. I did a residency last year in Nebraska City that helped me focus and break down all the edits that were pending in my manuscript. On a smaller scale, I often go to a cafe or the library when I feel stuck. Even getting a couple of good hours in can make a difference. It doesn’t have to be an entire day!

I hope this is helpful - hit reply if you have any questions/comments/thoughts! Thanks, as always, for reading!

Keep scrolling for this month’s opportunities!

~~~

🍁 September Deadlines

✍🏼 Due 9/20: 2026 Periplus Fellowship (for BIPOC writers)

✍🏼 Due 9/20: Columbia Journal submissions (fiction, non-fiction)

🩰 Due 9/21: LAUNCH:LA Residency (for Los Angeles emerging dance makers)

✍🏼 Due 9/21: 2025 Printed Matter Publisher Work Grant

🎨 Due 9/22: Queens Museum Jerome Foundation Fellowship for Emerging Artists in New York City

🎨 Due 9/22: Black Artists+Designers Guild Creative Futures Grant

🎨 Due 9/30: Dorothy Antoinette LaSelle 2025 Travel Fellowship (for Texas-based artists)

✍🏼 Due 9/30: 2026 We Need Diverse Books Mentorship Program Application

✍🏼 Due 9/30: Kenyon Review submissions (poetry, fiction, essays, excerpts)

🎨✍🏼 Due 9/30: Vermont Studio Center Residencies

✍🏼 Due 9/30: Black Mountain Institute Shearing Fellowship

🎨✍🏼 Ongoing: Printed Matter Call for Decolonization, Resistance & Solidarity Artist Books, Zines and Posters

👻 October Deadlines

💭 Due 10/1: Getty Scholars Program (supports innovative research about art and its histories)

✍🏼 Due 10/1: Obsidian Foundation 2025 Online Poetry Retreat (for Black poets)

✍🏼 Due 10/1: Iowa Review fiction and poetry submissions

🎨 Due 10/5: LACE Lightning Fund open call (LA County artists)

✍🏼🎨 Due 10/10: ACCELERATOR - Los Angeles Performance Practice’s artist development program (multiple disciplines, LA-based artists)

🎨 Due 10/12: Call for Art: Fractured Foundations: 250 Years of American History at American Museum of Ceramic Art

🎨✍🏼 Due 10/15: Foglifter Journal Online Exclusive: Body Politics — Visual, Multimedia, & Literary Art Open Submission Call

💭 Due 10/17: Craft Research Fund Grant

💭 Due 10/30: Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships (for full-time graduate and professional degrees)

🎨 Due 10/30: Loewe Foundation Craft Prize 2026

🧡 November Deadlines

✍🏼 Due 11/1: Foglifter journal open submissions (multiple genres)

✍🏼 Due 11/1: Iowa Review Nonfiction submissions

💭 Due 11/4: Getty Post-Baccalaureate Conservation Internships

🎨 Due 11/11: The Hopper Prize Grants for Artists

Hi!

Some folks already know this but I needed to share on the newsletter too because it’s a big milestone moment and it’s been years in the making and…

My first collection of essays is slated to be published in 2027!

Everything still feels a little surreal but I am so excited to be working towards this next chapter. This is the longest, most difficult, most complex project I’ve ever worked on.

One of the essays in the book was first written back in 2019, and so much has happened since then — in the world at large, and in my own little corner. It’s difficult to process.

And let me tell you: there was no blood or sweat involved, but there were absolutely some tears! There were days when I was ready to stop trying.

This has been my childhood dream. And it required me to be delulu on some days. I had to keep going and trying and editing and refining and opening the same text over and over and telling myself it would be worth it.

In the meantime, it’s been so great to connect with folks who are also working on big projects, and also know what it’s like to keep the delulu vibes going. You have to believe in your project before anyone else does.

I am so, so grateful to everyone who has read this newsletter, forwarded it to a friend, and encouraged me to keep writing issues! This newsletter has been a great space to talk about the writing process, and remind myself why I love to write.

Looking ahead to future issue: Would you be interested in hearing about the book writing process? What area interests you the most?

Thanks, as always, for reading!

Keep scrolling for this month’s opportunities!

~~~

🍁 August Deadlines

🎥 Due 8/31: Kickstarter x Tubi: FilmStream Collective Fund

🎨 Due 8/31: Print Center New York New Voices Open Call

🍁 September Deadlines

✍🏼Due 9/1: 2026 Storyknife Residency Applications

🎨 Due 9/8: Root Division Exhibition Fellowship

🎨 Due 9/9: Princeton Arts Fellowship (and Hodder Fellowship)

🎨 Due 9/15: 2025 Boston Artadia Awards

🩰 Due 9/21: LAUNCH:LA Residency (for Los Angeles emerging dance makers)

🎨 Due 9/22: Queens Museum Jerome Foundation Fellowship for Emerging Artists in New York City

🎨 Due 9/22: Black Artists+Designers Guild Creative Futures Grant

🎨 Due 9/30: Dorothy Antoinette LaSelle 2025 Travel Fellowship (for Texas-based artists)

👻 October Deadlines

💭 Due 10/1: Getty Scholars Program (supports innovative research about art and its histories)

✍🏼 Due 10/1: Iowa Review fiction and poetry submissions

🎨 Due 10/5: LACE Lightning Fund open call (LA County artists)

💭 Due 10/17: Craft Research Fund Grant

💭 Due 10/30: Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships (for full-time graduate and professional degrees)

🎨 Due 10/30: Loewe Foundation Craft Prize 2026

🧡 November Deadlines

🎨 Due 11/11: The Hopper Prize Grants for Artists

It’s been almost a year since I hopped on a plane to head to Nebraska City for the first time in my life. There were many “firsts” that happened as I settled down for a two-week writing residency as part of the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts.

But before I even got there, I had to go through the research and application process. I was making a big decision: two weeks away from my home and routine. Two weeks in a new place. Two weeks to focus on my manuscript as much as I possibly could!

Women Who Submit Cofounder/Executive Director Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo recently invited me to do a workshop on how to apply to residencies. I wanted to focus on applying with confidence and enthusiasm!

As someone who has gotten many rejections, and has also gotten swept up in the spiral of “so-and-so is getting a cool prize, so-and-so got into a prestigious program, am I just a terrible writer???” I wanted to emphasize that you should feel excited about applying to the residencies you’re choosing.

With that in mind, I presented a few slides with some helpful tips for when you’re applying to residencies.

Remember: it’s your residency experience. No matter how fancy or prestigious, you want to make sure it’s a program that will be fulfilling and creatively nurturing for you. I pointed out some questions to ask yourself ahead of applying: what environment are you looking for? Do you want a program that builds in social time with other residents? What time of year makes the most sense for you to leave your usual routine?

In Nebraska City, I got to experience what it was like to share a house with four other strangers. Everyone there inspired me to keep working on my own project. And there were other factors that kept me productive and fulfilled: the quiet of the neighborhood, the dedicated writing office, the fireflies that lit up outside our window. I liked feeling far removed from home, so that in this new environment I could concentrate on my manuscript and get work done.

If you’re curious about applying to residencies and want to learn more, you can watch the YouTube recording of the workshop above (it was a HOT day in LA, thus the hand fan, please excuse the extra noise).

Thank you WWS and Xochitl for the opportunity, and for all that you do!

Keep scrolling for this month’s opportunities!

~~~

🍄 August Deadlines

✍🏼 Due 8/1: Prairie Schooner Creative Nonfiction Summer Essay Contest

✍🏼 Due 8/1: 2025 Nightboat Books Prose Reading Period

🎨 Due 8/5: Center for Cultural Innovation Artistic Innovation grant (Performance and Media Arts)

✍🏼 Due 8/8: Annual Cohort Open Call: Forging Journal (Native-led non-profit organization)

🎨 Due 8/13: Sci-Art Artist in Residence at Paul Robeson Galleries, Rutgers University - Newark

🎨 Due 8/15: The California Art Leadership Investments (CALI) Catalyst (for artists or arts workers)

✍🏼 Due 8/16: Black Warrior Review 2025 Nonfiction Contest (judged by Elissa Washuta)

✍🏼 Due 8/31: 2025 Gulf Coast Barthelme Prize in Short Prose (and two additional prizes: Translation, Art Writing)

🍁 September Deadlines

✍🏼Due 9/1: 2026 Storyknife Residency Applications

🎨 Due 9/9: Princeton Arts Fellowship (plus Hodder Fellowship

🩰 Due 9/21: LAUNCH:LA Residency (for Los Angeles emerging dance makers)

🎨 Due 9/22: Queens Museum Jerome Foundation Fellowship for Emerging Artists in New York City

👻 October Deadlines

💭 Due 10/1: Getty Scholars Program (supports innovative research about art and its histories)

🎨 Due 10/5: LACE Lightning Fund open call (LA County artists)

💭 Due 10/17: Craft Research Fund Grant

💭 Due 10/30: Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships (for full-time graduate and professional degrees)

This was going to be a very different newsletter but there’s been a lot going in Los Angeles these past couple of weeks. I’ve felt tired, sad, and angry: a cycle that doesn’t leave much room for extra writing.

At the same time, I’ve been heartened by the shows of solidarity across the city (and in other cities). My identity as a first-generation Latina has always been a big part of my writing. I am glad that if/when I write about this time, later, in the future, I can say: people were willing to speak out.

So, I leave you with a short note this month; I hope that’s okay.

In the meantime, I hope that you can find joy when possible. I hope that you lean into your community and hold your loved ones a little closer.

I’m grateful to know so many incredible writers and artist whose work helps me fill my cup. If you’d like something to read today, I suggest: “Instructions on Not Giving Up” by Ada Limón.

Keep scrolling for this month’s opportunities.

~~~

😎 June Deadlines

✍🏼 Rolling deadline: Anaphora Arts Writing Bootcamp

✍🏼 Rolling submissions: Ploughshares Regular Reading Period

🎨 Due 6/20: ADA 35th Anniversary Art Submission (City of Los Angeles artists)

✍🏼 Due 6/30: Get the Word Out (publicity incubator for early career authors)

🎨 Due 6/30: 2025 Open Call for Digital Art Commissions — Pérez Art Museum Miami

🌴 July Deadlines

🎥🎨 Due 7/1: City of West Hollywood 2026 Arts Grant Program (artists, filmmakers)

🎥 Due 7/2: Barbara Hammer Lesbian Experimental Filmmaking Grant

🎨 Due 7/6: Studio Channel Islands Open Call: All Media 2025

✍🏼 Due 7/11: StoryStudio Novel In A Year Programs

✍🏼 Due 7/15: Tupelo Quarterly Prize for Cross-Disciplinary Writing

🍄 August Deadlines

✍🏼 Due 8/1: Prairie Schooner Creative Nonfiction Summer Essay Contest

🎨 Due 8/15: The California Art Leadership Investments (CALI) Catalyst (for artists or arts workers)

✍🏼 Due 8/16: Black Warrior Review 2025 Nonfiction Contest, Judged by Elissa Washuta

🍁 September Deadlines

🎨 Due 9/22: Queens Museum Jerome Foundation Fellowship for Emerging Artists in New York City

I spent January through April going to campus twice a week to teach, a major change to my schedule as a freelancer who works from home most days.

The change required that I adjust the way I divided up my time, and the way I focused. I do love a deadline (that no deadline = more procrastination). But this change required that I really sharpen my skills in time management and, sometimes, multitasking.

I spent a lot more time on the bus and Metro. I listened to podcasts and audiobooks. I watched a whole new YouTube series. I read a couple of new books. I called my friends (hi Jessica!) and they sometimes overheard the babies crying in the background, or the robot voice that announced the next stop. I did some free writing. But, also, I stared out the window a lot.

And then, in late April, class ended. The semester was really special and inspiring and broadened my sense of what it means to talk about art and writing. Teaching was an entirely different experience from being in meetings or writing or editing. I was so grateful for the oppportunity.

Closing that chapter also felt surreal. Especially as I start a new, personal life chapter (iykyk).

I adjusted to a new schedule, again. It felt strange not to be on the bus or train for extended periods of time, even while I was grateful to get some of that time back.

Now, I’m trying to walk more. So much of my work requires sitting still and I’ve become more aware of that in the last couple of years. I had really bad plantar fasciitis earlier this year, which reminded me to stretch more. And, in general, to pay more attention to the body. Because I am, so often, in my head.

Speaking of which: I’m trying not to get in my head too much about planning the second half of the year. The first half of the year felt top-heavy, in a way. There’s so much to do, and so little time. So many events. And details. I would often think. Some nights I couldn’t sleep because of the fear that I missed something, or that I needed to write just one more thing on my to-do list for later.

Right around the time I created the grading rubric for the students’ final projects, I started dreaming that I needed to do my final project. In one dream, I was the one worried about missing class.

The air is buzzing with graduations right now, and it’s funny to think about how these old anxieties came up again during my sleeping hours.

This month and next, so many students will experience huge adjustments. They will move on to a new school, or an entirely new life as post-grads.

If I may, I am looking to them for encouragement, really. I was once in their shoes. I’ve done this before, I like to remind myself. I will figure it out.

I will try to enjoy the big moments (like my last class!) without squeezing them too tight.

Keep scrolling for this month’s opportunities!

~~~

🍊May Deadlines

✍🏼 Due 5/30: Geffen Playhouse Writers’ Room 2025-2026 Playwrights

✍🏼 Due 5/31: Center for Fiction / Susan Kamil Emerging Writer Fellowship

✍🏼 Due 5/31: Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction 2025 Competition

😎 June Deadlines

✍🏼 Due 6/1: Michigan Quarterly Review 2025 James A. Winn Nonfiction Prize

🎨 Due 6/2: The Caribbean Cultural Institute (CCI) Artist Fellowship

💭 Due 6/2: The Caribbean Cultural Institute (CCI) Research Fellowship

🎨 Due 6/4: Artists Micro Grant Program - San Bernardino County

🎨 Due 6/6: Los Angeles Performance Practice’s 2025 BRIDGE THE GAPS: Wildfire Relief for L.A. Artists

📸 6/6: Women Photograph Mentorship Program

👗 Due 6/9: 2026 Vilcek Prizes for Creative Promise in Fashion & Design and Fashion & Culture

🎨 Due 6/15: Center for Cultural Innovation Quick Grant

🎨 Due 6/30: 2025 Open Call for Digital Art Commissions — Pérez Art Museum Miami

🌴 July Deadlines

🎥🎨 Due 7/1: City of West Hollywood 2026 Arts Grant Program (artists, filmmakers)

🎨 Due 7/6: Studio Channel Islands Open Call: All Media 2025

🍄 August Deadlines

✍🏼 Due 8/1: Prairie Schooner Creative Nonfiction Summer Essay Contest

🎨 Due 8/15: The California Art Leadership Investments (CALI) Catalyst (for artists or arts workers)

Phew, this month has been busy, my apologies again for this newsletter being a little later!

During a recent Saturday, I took the 720 down to Westwood. I popped open my umbrella to get some shade while I took a pleasant walk to the Hammer Museum to meet a friend. Both of us have memories from our early 20s in the area (some of which, we discovered that day, overlap!) and both of us really wanted to carve out time to see the exhibition “Alice Coltrane, Monument Eternal.”

The show chronicles the life and artistic influence of jazz musician, devotional leader, and mother, Alice Coltrane. From the start, we noticed the really vibrant color palette and intentional design of the show (lots of orange and blue hues), and the sheer size of the exhibition. It’s the kind of show you really need to visit more than once.

The exhibition features ephemera from Coltrane’s personal archive and artworks by contemporary artists that engage with her work. It was clear that so many artists have been influenced by her practices, both musical and spiritual.

There’s a tangible connection between Alice’s artistic legacy and artists making work today, which you could clearly feel in the video work “Isis & Osiris” (2024) by Ephraim Asili.

The harp figured as a central instrument in Alice’s musical life and in this exhibition. “Isis & Osiris” chronicles a “formative period of Alice Coltrane’s Life and musicianship, shortly after the death of her husband, the saxophonist John Coltrane.” The film also spotlights harpist Brandee Younger as she discusses her influences and performs on a special instrument: the hard-carved and hard-gilded harp that John Coltrane gifted to Alice shortly before he passed away.

“Can you image playing the harp?” I said to my friend. “It’s so ethereal. So other worldly.”

We sat side by side and watched as Brandee unloaded the harp from the trunk of a car and then settled into a recording studio room to play the instrument.

She’s incredible on the instrument, and Asili frames her performance in a series of vibrant, colorful shots that are sometimes surreal and pleasantly disorienting. It feels like an intimate moment, watching Brandee play the harp, knowing the history of the instrument and Alice’s work.

“Are you ready to go?” my friend said to me, after we sat in that dark room for a while. “I mean, I could stay in here all day, but you know,” she said, alluding to the rest of the show.

I nodded and we wandered through the rest of the exhibition. Taking that moment to pause, to watch an instrument that I rarely see in action, (when do I ever see a harp player?) felt necessary. I felt lighter and I moved more slowly as we walked through the rest of the show.

Other works in the exhibition encouraged pausing and meditating. Among them was Adee Roberson’s piece, which visitors are encouraged to stand on. (We, of course, were hesitant to step on the work at first, until a kind museum guard assured us it was okay).

The Hammer’s text explains: “Roberson's selenite floor sculpture, "BLUE NILE (cosmogram #2)," is inspired by the Kongo cosmogram, an Afro-diasporic spiritual emblem that connects flesh and soul. Music transforms the sculpture into a sound and energy experience.”

We walked around a bit after the show and then, of course, the weekend drew to a close. My days have felt chock-full of to-do items and scheduling. The week starting to fly by. The pause that we took in that room, watching Brandee play the harp, felt like so long ago. Now the pace was: bus ride, class, phone call, meeting, to-do, to-do, to-do.

One morning during my commute to campus, I was running later than I wanted to be. I decided to get off at the nearest stop, rather than the one before (which I usually try to do, to get more steps in).

The bus doors opened and passengers got off at the stop before mine. But then: we paused. I know that sometimes bus drivers do this when they are ahead of schedule. They wait it out and then get back on the road.

My mind went through the usual tracks of dialogue: Why aren’t we moving? I am already running late. Can we move now please?

But then I thought: Let me pause. Two or three minutes won’t be the end-all. I am nearly there anyway. So I closed my eyes for a bit and took a few breaths. I told myself those breaths would also help me for the rest of the day. I had a lot to do, but for now, I could just focus on breathing.

I took a moment to pause.

And then the bus merged back onto the road and I requested my stop.

Keep scrolling for this month’s opportunities!

A quick note: I know it’s been a really tough month or so, since the last newsletter, for arts funding. It’s heartbreaking to see. I hope the opportunities below are helpful. And I just want to say: please keep making your art!

~~~

🌸 April Deadlines

✍🏼 Due 4/23: Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant (for manuscripts under contract)

💭 Due 4/27: In Residence at Sip & Sonder (LA-based Black & Brown creatives)

🎨 Due 4/30: Dieu Donné Workspace Residency Program

✍🏼 Due 4/30: Gulf Coast literary magazine prizes (fiction, nonfiction, poetry)

✍🏼 Due 4/30: StoryBoard Conference & Festival

💭 Due 4/30: Miriam Jiménez Román Fellowship 2025-2026 (for post-doc candidates and junior scholars researching/studying Afro-Latinx communities)

🍊May Deadlines

✍🏼🎨 Due 5/1: Ragdale 2026 Residency Program

🎥 Due 5/1: Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns Prize for Film

✍🏼 Due 5/2: Honduran Garifuna Writers Mentorship Intensive

🎨 Due 5/2: Headlands Center for the Arts Tournesol Award (for Bay Area painters)

✍🏼 Due 5/7: Andy Warhol Arts Writers Grant

✍🏼 Due 5/14: Sundance Institute 2026 Development Track (fiction feature works-in-progress)

💭 Due 5/16: Descanso Gardens call for curatorial proposals

✍🏼 Due 5/20: Center for Craft 2025 Craft Archive Fellowship

💭 Due 5/23: Latino Museum Studies Program (LMSP) Predoctoral and Postdoctoral Fellowships

🎨 Due 5/31: Jonathan and Barbara Silver Foundation 2025 Grant for Sculpture

🎨 Due 5/31: Oak Spring Garden Foundation 2026 Residency/Fellowship Opportunities

😎 June Deadlines

✍🏼 Due 6/1: Michigan Quarterly Review 2025 James A. Winn Nonfiction Prize

🎨 Due 6/4: Artists Micro Grant Program - San Bernardino County

👗 Due 6/9: 2026 Vilcek Prizes for Creative Promise in Fashion & Design and Fashion & Culture

🌴 July Deadlines

🎨 Due 7/1: City of West Hollywood 2026 Arts Grant Program

I’m teaching a course on creative storytelling and narrative, focused on Brown identities in the U.S. this semester, a new addition to my routine and schedule. (This is, partly, why this newsletter got de-prioritized this month. Thank you for your patience!)

The course focuses on nature, walking and how we can feel connected to nature even within an urban/city setting. In discussing the work of writers and artists of color with the class, I’ve also been reflecting on my own relationship to nature, something I started doing a lot more during the pandemic. Because I was limited in where I could spend my time in those early months of quarantine, for fear of traveling and getting sick, I spent a lot of time walking in our neighborhood. And that, in turn, inspired me to look more closely at all the trees, bushes, flowers, and plants around me.

My eyes suddenly opened to so much, even though it these plants were there the whole time.

In class, we recently read selections from Little Seed by Wei Tchou, an experimental memoir that combines research on ferns with memoir. Tchou reflects on her youth and her complicated relationship with her family; her Chinese American identity; her yearning for belonging; and her obsession with ferns. She shares her research and her frustrations with the world of ferns and fern taxonomy. The book weaves together themes of coming of age (heartbreak, career disappointments, big city living) with facts about ferns.

I found the book during a writing residency at the Mendocino Art Center (if you’re reading this Dav, I’m thinking of you). It was in a cozy bookstore with a resident cat that was napping in a sunny spot near the windows.

Little Seed is the first time I’ve learned so much about ferns and I was eager to discuss the book with my students, because of the way it braids together research and memoir. My time walking in our neighborhood has turned into a newfound curiosity for plants: I have photographed them, researched them, and watched them bloom.

After we met and discussed the text in class, I realized that I still hadn’t found every plant near me.

One morning, I practically gasp out loud in surprise when I saw a fiddlehead fern tucked into a commercial area near our apartment. How long had it been there? Why hadn’t I seen it before? I thought I was paying close attention, but maybe I wasn’t?

The surprise delighted me (we are also reading Ross Gay’s “Book of Delights,” so that language and energy is currently on my mind). I’d never read about fiddlehead ferns until Tchou’s book. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I noticed the fern near our apartment after discussing the book with my class. All these years living on the same block, and I hadn’t noticed that fern until now. What a gift.

Here’s to looking again, and again. I hope you can find a moment this week (or month, or year) to feel grounded, to slow down into the present moment and find something that makes you gasp in delight. May this feed your creative practice. May it lead to new creative possibilities. Or, may it bring you a moment of respite, brief but nourishing in its intensity.

Keep scrolling for this month’s opportunities!

~~~

🌞 March Deadlines

✍🏼 Due 3/31: Laura Boss Narrative Poetry Award

🎨✍🏼 Due 3/31: Vermont Studio Center fellowships

🎨 Due 3/31: Bemis Center 2026 Residencies

✍🏼 Due 3/31: A Public Space Writing Fellowship

🌸 April Deadlines

🎨 Due 4/1: The Clay Studio of Missoula Artist Residency

✍🏼 Due 4/1: Black Mountain Institute Kluge Center Fellowship at the Library of Congress

✍🏼 Due 4/9: National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships

🎨 Due 4/11: Artist in Residence at The Latinx Project (2025-2026)

✍🏼 Due 4/14: Hedgebrook Writing Residencies (Playwriting, Screenwriting, Fiction, etc.)

✍🏼 Due 4/15: New Ohio Review Contests (poetry, fiction, nonfiction)

✍🏼 Due 4/17: Pen Parentis Writing Fellowship for New Parents

💭 Due 4/18: Center for Craft 2026 Curatorial Fellowship

✍🏼 Due 4/23: Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant (for manuscripts under contract)

✍🏼 Due 4/30: Gulf Coast literary magazine prizes (fiction, nonfiction, poetry)

✍🏼 Due 4/30: StoryBoard Conference & Festival

🍊May Deadlines

✍🏼🎨 Due 5/1: Ragdale 2026 Residency Program

✍🏼 Due 5/20: Center for Craft 2025 Craft Archive Fellowship

🎨 Due 5/31: Jonathan and Barbara Silver Foundation 2025 Grant for Sculpture

🎨 Due 5/31: Oak Spring Garden Foundation 2026 Residency/Fellowship Opportunities

It took me a minute to finish this issue—I’m sorry it’s a little late in going out. The fires in Los Angeles and other events in January made it hard to focus. I also kept feeling the pressure of finding something meaningful to say.

So I did what many writers are great at doing: I procrastinated! And, thus, the newsletter is a little later in the month. But, I urge you to give yourself some grace when you need it, too.

After rooting around in my brain, I couldn’t figure out a way to write about the last month and a half in a totally lucid or eloquent way. I am not eloquent about the present moment! Maybe, that’s because things feel far from neat.

Maybe, it’s because things don’t work that way, these days.

Maybe, you can relate.

Here’s what I will say: The beginning of 2025 made it clear that so many things I love and care about were (and are) under threat: like support for the arts, and basic human rights for communities. My city, itself, was under threat: both physically, because of the fires, and mentally/energetically.

My partner and I both know people who were affected by the fires, to varying degrees; and our friends know more people who were affected; and those people know more people. The first few days of the fire felt especially somber and awful; and people are still dealing with the effects today.

Here’s the kicker: there were still things to do, bills to pay, tasks to take care of. It felt like grieving, in a sense, when you can’t quite grasp how everyone and everything around you keeps moving. It feels like everyone else is standing on that moving walkway in airports, while you’re sitting on the steps of a staircase, trying to find the energy to get back up.

Fittingly, there’s a Jason Schneiderman poem in “You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World,” edited by Ada Limón, called “Staircase,” that I read just a couple of weeks ago.

This part really resonated with me:

“Tell me what I’m supposed to say about the end of the world. Tell me how not to be hysterical every time I see what’s coming. Every time I see what’s here. Tell me how to accept that it didn’t have to be this way but that it is. Tell me how to accept this fire, this sky, this day. Don’t leave me here in the ashes. Tell me to go inside. Tell me not to stare at the sun. Tell me it’s OK to be alone. Tell me it’s OK to be scared. Tell me it’s OK to be grief stricken. Tell me not to give up…”

I take public transportation a lot and once in a while I’m struck by the interactions that happen on the train or the bus. One recent morning, I went up to a woman on the Metro. She was wearing a mask and I had forgotten mine at home. The train was full, and I wanted to be safe. So I figured I’d ask if she had an extra one to spare.

She seemed alarmed to see me coming up to her, but then softened after I asked her, “Do you have an extra mask?”

“No, sorry,” she replied.

I went back to my seat, a few rows away from her, but in area where she could still see me. She was sitting on the seats that faced the direction the train was going; I sat in the opposite direction.

When she got up to leave, she waved at me, before sliding through the doors. I smiled and hoped that my facial expression reached her before she left, because at first I was confused. I didn’t realize she was waving at me. She had taken a moment to say goodbye.

Is this a sappy moment? Yes. Was that a tough week that required a moment like this? Also yes.

I hope you’re taking care of yourself, whatever that might look like. I appreciate you reading and supporting and making your art.

Keep scrolling for 20+ opportunities!

~~~

🌷 February Deadlines

✍🏼 Due 2/24: Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships (technically the registration due date, see link for more info)

🎨 Due 2/26: Vincent Price Art Museum’s 2025 District Wide Student Art Biennial (Los Angeles Community College District students)

✍🏼 Due 2/28: Imagine Little Tokyo Short Story Contest

✍🏼 Due 2/28: AWP Award Series (Poetry, Creative Nonfiction, Short Fiction, Novel)

🌞 March Deadlines

🎨✍🏼 Due 3/2: Voices of the Wilderness Artist-in-Residence

💭 Due 3/3: Liberated Planet Studio Spring 2025 Artist Research Program

✍🏼 Due 3/3: Poetry Foundation Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships

💭 Due 3/3: New York Public Library Short-Term Research Fellowships

✍🏼 Due 3/15: Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award

✍🏼 Due 3/15: Linda J. Albertano Poetry Fellowship

🎨 Due 3/16: REDCAT New Original Works Festival (LA artists, performance works)

✍🏼 Due 3/17: Irene Yamamoto Arts Writers Fellowship (music writers of color)

✍🏼 Due 3/21: Lambda Literary Awards (LGBTQ+ published books)

✍🏼 Due 3/23: Dana Wood Chaney Writers Fund (for StoryStudio Chicago courses)

✍🏼 Due 3/31: Laura Boss Narrative Poetry Award

🎨 Application opening in March: Haystack Mountain School of Crafts Open Studio Residency

🌸 April Deadlines

🎨 Due 4/1: The Clay Studio of Missoula Artist Residency

✍🏼 Due 4/1: Black Mountain Institute Kluge Center Fellowship at the Library of Congress

✍🏼 Due 4/9: National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships

🎨 Due 4/11: Artist in Residence at The Latinx Project (2025-2026)

✍🏼 Due 4/14: Hedgebrook Writing Residencies (Playwriting, Screenwriting, Fiction, etc.)

✍🏼 Due 4/15: New Ohio Review Contests (poetry, fiction, nonfiction)

✍🏼 Due 4/17: Pen Parentis Writing Fellowship for New Parents

✍🏼 Due 4/23: Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant (for manuscripts under contract)

🍊May (!) Deadlines

✍🏼🎨 Due 5/1: Ragdale 2026 Residency Program

🎨 Due 5/31: Jonathan and Barbara Silver Foundation 2025 Grant for Sculpture

Rather than strict resolutions for the new years, I’m interested in what creative habits and practices I want to continue, or nourish, from 2024.

I know there’s a lot going on. And there’s a lot we need to fight for in the coming years. There’s no “but” here — I know things will be bleak some days, and I also believe in the importance of creative practice and expression, even if it’s just you and a sketchbook or a notebook.

On that level, just you and the page, there’s space for catharsis. There’s space for anger and grief.

And maybe it’s naive of me, but I do think that creative outlets make us more empathetic people. “Creative outlets” in my mind can be anything, and everything, really. Cooking a meal. Doodling. Rolling down a hill in a park.

The other day I wrote down a weird little story thread I had in my head—the kind that makes me ask “could this be anything?” or “will this sound weird on the page?”

I don’t usually follow these threads because A) I don’t get them too often, since my brain is full of other things and B) I don’t always have time to write them down before they flit away, like a delicate little idea-butterfly that I will never see again!!

But on this particular day, I took a few minutes and wrote it all down. I didn’t ask anything of it, just put down what was in my head and then closed my laptop.

I rolled down the hill, then got back up and marveled at the act of just following the momentum.

I hope you find what you need for your creative practice, and for your full self, this year. And if there’s a specific topic or question you want me to cover in future issues, hit REPLY and let me know!

Keep scrolling for 30+ opportunities for creatives below! This is a big issue!

~~~

💡 January Deadlines

🎨 Due 1/15: 2025-2026 Folger Institute Artistic Research Fellowships

✍🏼 Due 1/15: Georgia Review Prose Prize

✍🏼 Due 1/15: Gregory Djanikian Scholars in Poetry

🎨✍🏼 Due 1/17: Los Angeles Public Library Creators in Residence

💭 Due 1/17: Museum of International Folk Art Summer Research Fellowship Program

🎨 Due 1/17: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Community Arts Initiative: Artist Project (2025-2026)

✍🏼 Due 1/19: Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing Voices of Color Fellowships

🎨 Due 1/31: Taft Museum of Art Duncanson Artist in Residence

🎨 ✍🏼 Due 1/31: Clyfford Still Museum 2025 Institute Residential Fellowship Program

💭 Due 1/31: 2025 Autry Research Fellowships

✍🏼 Due 1/31: Eliud Martínez Prize (Hispanic, Latino/a/x, or Chicana/o/x writers)

🎨 Due 1/31: 2026 Duncanson Artist-in-Residence, Taft Museum of Art

🎨 ✍🏼 Due 1/31: Barbara Deming Memorial Fund (feminist writers and visual artists)

✍🏼 Due 1/31: The 2025 Terry J. Cox Poetry Award

🎨 Due 1/31: American Museum of Ceramic Art 2024-2025 Artist in Residence

🌷 February Deadlines

🎨 Due 2/1: Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts - 2025 Summer Residency

🎨 Due 2/1: Artadia Awards - Los Angeles

💭 Due 2/1: Smithsonian American Art Museum Audrey Flack Short-Term Fellowship

🎨✍🏼 Due 2/10: MacDowell Fellowship

✍🏼 Due 2/14: In-Person Native Children’s and YA Writing Intensive 2025

✍🏼 Due 2/14: Undocupoets Fellowship

🎨✍🏼 Due 2/15: Forge Project Fellowships 2025

✍🏼 Due 2/16: Aldo & Estella Leopold Residency

✍🏼 Due 2/24: Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships (technically the registration due date, see link for more info)

✍🏼 Due 2/28: Imagine Little Tokyo Short Story Contest

✍🏼 Due 2/28: AWP Award Series (Poetry, Creative Nonfiction, Short Fiction, Novel)

🌞 March Deadlines

🎨✍🏼 Due 3/2: Voices of the Wilderness Artist-in-Residence

✍🏼 Due 3/3: Poetry Foundation Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships

💭 Due 3/3: New York Public Library Short-Term Research Fellowships

✍🏼 Due 3/15: Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award

✍🏼 Due 3/31: Laura Boss Narrative Poetry Award

🎨 Application opening in March: Haystack Mountain School of Crafts Open Studio Residency

🌸 April Deadlines

🎨 Due 4/1: The Clay Studio of Missoula Artist Residency

✍🏼 Due 4/9: National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships

✍🏼 Due 4/17: Pen Parentis Writing Fellowship for New Parents

Many times this year, I’ve wondered how a creative practice fits into everything happening in the world. November felt overwhelming, and I couldn’t find the energy to write a newsletter issue. I hope you can understand why.

In getting this month’s issue prepped, I spent weeks trying to figure out what to talk about. Eventually, I settled on a topic that feels authentic: what writing meant to me this year, and what it means to me every day.

And there’s another theme to this issue: gratitude. It feels immense, and multilayered, and different from other years.

When I feel gratitude, I also feel grief: I hit some major moments this year, and grieved the people who weren’t there to see them. I also felt grief for people I don’t even know, in other parts of the world, dealing with horrific events every day.

When I feel gratitude, I also feel fear: I want to hold all the people all things I love closer, because the next few years won’t be easy.

And other days, when I feel gratitude, I stop to give thanks for everyday moments of joy. I’ve spent years battling anxiety and depression—and one of my biggest challenges is staying in the moment. Some days I wonder: Will the joy dissipate sooner than I think? How can I hold it tight enough, so I don’t lose it? Other days, the tough ones, I think: Will this moment of depression ever end? Can things ever feel good again?

I’ve had to learn that joy and sadness co-exist.

What does this have to do with writing? How does writing, as a practice, fit into all of this?

Writing has allowed me to slow down. It has encouraged me to re-evaluate the “small” things around me as precious, and worthy of attention. When I look at a stunning sight, whether a new body of water in a new place, or a certain patch of sky right on my block, I like to slow down and think about how to describe it. Sometimes I take out my notes app and jot some phrases down. Other times I take a photo to reference later.

This year, I was incredibly lucky to see new places, all tied to my writing practice. I did a writing workshop in Gambier, Ohio through Kenyon Review; my first-ever long residency in Nebraska City through the Kimmel Nelson Harding Center for the Arts; and a gorgeous, shorter residency in Mendocino at the Mendocino Art Center.

I’m so grateful to everyone who opened their doors for me.

Writing also helps me think about connection. You can create a connection with another person without ever seeing them in front of you. I know, because I’ve felt connected to writers I’ve never met, through books they’ve written. I’ve felt connected to stories about places, even though I’ll never meet the people who shaped them.

In Nebraska City, I shared a meal with four strangers who quickly became my circle of people in this new place. I got stuck in a thunderstorm and stood under the eave of a restaurant, which was closed that day, watching the rain fall. I texted my apartment mate, someone I’d met just days before, and she offered to pick me up, even though we hardly knew each other (hi, roomie!)

Mendocino reminded me that people are still kind without expecting anything in return. I talked to more strangers, learning about their lives and their passions; I remembered why I love to write about home and people and art.

Writing helped me hold on to these moments.

I tried to listen this year. To read. To witness. To stretch my knowledge, and my patience. Writing helped me do all of that, too.

A lot of times, when people asked via text or social media how I was doing, I answered, “I’m just trying to be a person.” I said jokingly at first, but then it felt more and more accurate.

I am, many days, just trying to be a human. One with empathy and a willingness to learn.

I hope that in 2024, this newsletter encouraged you to nurture your creative practice. I hope it helped you learn about all the possible avenues for exploring your artistic journey. At the very least, I hope it was entertaining to read, even on those days when it felt difficult to make something, or even think about making something.

I’m grateful, last BUT NOT LEAST, to you, for reading and supporting. Thank you so much for being here.

Keep scrolling for 20 opportunities for creatives!

~~~

⛷December Deadlines

✍🏼 Due 12/15: Asian American Writers' Workshop Fellowships

✍🏼 Due 12/19: Narratively 2024 Memoir Prize

✍🏼 Due 12/31: Get the Word Out: Publicity Incubator

🎨 Due 12/31: Emerging Artist Incubator Program Spring 2025 (Sonoma County artists)

✍🏼 Due 12/31: Hollis Summers Poetry Prize

✍🏼 Due 12/31: Baton Rouge Area Foundation Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence (African American writers)

💡 January Deadlines

✍🏼 Due 1/2: North Carolina Writers’ Network Jacobs/Jones African American Literary Prize

🎨 Due 1/2: Artists & Mothers 2025-2026 Grant

✍🏼 Due 1/2: Lambda Literary 2025 Virtual Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices Application

✍🏼 Due 1/6: Leon Levy Center for Biography Fellowships

🎨 Due 1/6: UCLA Film & Television Archive’s Artist-in-Residence Program

🎨 Due 1/10: Joshua Tree Highlands Artist Residency

🎨 Due 1/13: Hallie Ford Fellowship in the Visual Arts

✍🏼 Due 1/14: New Ohio Review Prizes (Nonfiction, Fiction, Poetry)

🎨 Due 1/15: 2025-2026 Folger Institute Artistic Research Fellowships

✍🏼 Due 1/15: Georgia Review Prose Prize

🎨✍🏼 Due 1/17: Los Angeles Public Library Creators in Residence

💭 Due 1/17: Museum of International Folk Art Summer Research Fellowship Program

🎨 Due 1/17: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Community Arts Initiative: Artist Project (2025-2026)

🎨 Due 1/31: Taft Museum of Art Duncanson Artist in Residence

🎨 ✍🏼 Due 1/31: Clyfford Still Museum 2025 Institute Residential Fellowship Program

💭 Due 1/31: 2025 Autry Research Fellowships

🌷 February Deadlines

🎨 Due 2/1: Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts - 2025 Summer Residency

💭 Due 2/1: Smithsonian American Art Museum Audrey Flack Short-Term Fellowship

🎨✍🏼 Due 2/15: Forge Project Fellowships 2025

✍🏼 Due 2/24: Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships (technically the registration due date, see link for more info)

🌞 March Deadlines

💭 Due 3/3: New York Public Library Short-Term Research Fellowships

When you’re on the outside looking in, it can feel like art-related milestones happen quickly.

If you’re like me, you might have moments when you’re thinking “Wow, that person is so prolific!” or “Wow they write books so quickly” or “Wow they got another show at a gallery already!”

I’ve been thinking a lot about time and timing and timelines (thanks to some reading for a future article, and also just due to the fact that, somehow, October is almost over!!).

This newsletter is late, but the month was busy and, honestly, current events felt like too much. But if you’d like to take a little journey into art-making and the creative process with me, that’s what this newsletter is here for. I hope you read this with your favorite beverage nearby, or in a cozy spot at home.

Speaking of being things being later than expected: I had to circle back to my editor three times to let her know I needed more time to finish a big round of edits on my manuscript. As I sat in front of the computer and tried to scroll through the Word document once again—after a day of regular work things and regular life things—I suddenly thought actually, I need more time. So, I asked for it. And then I asked again. And again.

I had to accept that I just wasn’t ready. And, then, I had to accept that I needed to let some parts of the manuscript go—by which I mean, I cut one essay because I realized it just wasn’t working. It felt hard to admit, but I could also tell my heart wasn’t in it.

As I approached the end of edits, I also needed to accept the fact that the writer I am today is just that: the writer I am today. I’m not the same writer I’ll be in five years.

At some points in the process, I’ve looked back at the manuscript and looked at certain sections so much more clearly. The writer I was when I first started the book isn’t the same as present me.

That being said, I can get really critical. I read a lot, which means I read work by incredible writers. And I often think: maybe it’s just that I’m not that good. Another writer would know how to say this best.

But—I am writing and editing this manuscript to the best of my ability as the writer I am today. I can’t skip ahead to what future me might write or edit.

I accept the skill set and insights that I have today. I accept that I can’t fast-track the experience of writing a book for the first time. I can’t fast forward to being the “amazing writer who writes everything so beautifully that everyone cries when they read it on the page.”

I’ve heard many writers say they’ve been working on a book for 10 or 20 years. I had to adjust my mindset since working on the manuscript, especially as someone who is used to shorter deadlines and turnaround times in the freelance writing world.

I started earnestly working on this manuscript in 2020, which feels like a long time ago to me. And even in this latest round of edits, I was looking at comments and questions from January 2024—which, also, feels like a long time ago.

These things take time. That gallery show from an artist or that fifth book by an author or that documentary by a filmmaker—they all took time. It might look like they happened overnight but that’s rarely the case. I know we’ve all heard the stories about songwriters who write hit tracks in 5 minutes (or whatever) and writers who have amazing first drafts. But even in those scenarios, I firmly believe that all the time those artists put into their craft before that hit track or amazing book led them to that moment. Only they know how many hours, days and weeks they’ve spent working on their craft, thinking about their craft, pouring into their craft.

I recently visited Betye Saar’s exhibition at Roberts Projects and the artist was there for the opening reception. She’s 98 years old and looked happy to be chatting with the gallery director about the installation we all came to see.

I turned to my friend and art show companion (hi Sophie!) and said, “Do you ever think about what your work will look like when you’re 90-something years old? What does it feels like to have made art for that long?”

I couldn’t help but feel starstruck not only because Saar’s work is so important impact in contemporary art, but because she has been sol steadfast in her artmaking.

How cool to be in this moment and forget about the milestones or the achievements—the wants and needs that can sometimes bog me down.

What a gift that I can write to you, all, today. Ten years ago, I wasn’t the writer I am right now. And however many years in the future we want to stretch towards, I accept I don’t know that writer yet, either. Can’t wait to meet her!!

Keep scrolling for 20 opportunities for creatives!

~~~

☕️ November Deadlines

🎨 Due 11/1: Museum of Glass 2025 Visiting Artist

✍🏼 Due 11/1: Stanford University Stegner Fellowships

🎥 Due 11/4: California Documentary Project Grants

✍🏼 Due 11/4: Northern California Writers' Retreat 2025

🎨 Due 11/7: Clay Studio of Missoula “It’s the Little Things” Juried Show

🎨 Due 11/7: LA County Public Art Apprenticeship Program

🎨 Due 11/15: Textile Arts Center Work In Progress (WIP) Residency

✍🏼 Due 11/15: Yale Younger Poets Prize

✍🏼 Due 11/15: Brooklyn Film & Arts Festival Non-Fiction Prize

🎨 Due 11/15: Women’s Studio Workshop Artist’s Book Residency Grant

✍🏼 Due 11/30: Red Hen Press Quill (Queer) Prose Award

⛷December Deadlines

🎨 Due 12/5: ƛ̓x̣etkʷ Artist-in-Residence Program

🎨 Due 12/19: Archie Bray Foundation Resident Artist Application 2025

🎨 Due 12/31: Emerging Artist Incubator Program Spring 2025 (Sonoma County artists)

✍🏼 Due 12/31: Hollis Summers Poetry Prize

✍🏼 Due 12/31: Baton Rouge Area Foundation Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence (African American writers)

🌟 January Deadlines

✍🏼 Due 1/2: North Carolina Writers’ Network Jacobs/Jones African American Literary Prize

✍🏼 Due 1/6: Leon Levy Center for Biography Fellowships

🎨 Due 1/10: Joshua Tree Highlands Artist Residency

✍🏼 Due 1/15: Georgia Review Prose Prize

I’m keeping this one short! It’s been a busy month but I’m looking forward to sharing exciting news: I’m holding a virtual workshop all about applying to grants and residencies. It’ll be a good chance to connect and discuss best practices for applications.

Every month, I share links for creatives, and now it’s time to get into the nitty gritty. Looking to apply to more grants and residencies? Let’s chat!

I’m hosting a one-night, virtual talk where I share my main tips for applying to grants and residencies. It’ll be about an hour, laidback and open to all your questions.

What we’ll cover:

• Examples of my past applications, so you can see real-life material

• Tips for crafting an application that captures your specific project/passions

• How to create a structure for accountability so you can get your application in!

• A Q&A session open to any questions you have (no question too big or small)

Just this year, I completed a residency at Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts and, before that, I’ve participated in writing workshops such as the Kenyon Review Writers Week, Tin House and Idyllwild Writers Week. I’m also a recipient of a Barbara Deming Memorial Fund grant for my non-fiction manuscript.

I’d love to see you at this virtual chat taking place Thursday, September 19. Suggested donation is $10, though no one will be turned away if that cost is prohibitive.

REPLY to this email with your RSVP and I’ll get you all the details.

Talk soon! And keep scrolling for this month’s opportunities for creatives.

~~~

🌲 September Deadlines

✍🏼 Due 9/30: University of Kansas Press 2026 Miller Williams Poetry Prize

✍🏼 Due 9/30: Gold Line/Ricochet Nonfiction Chapbook Competition (no fee for BIPOC)

🎨✍🏼 Due 9/30: Acadia National Park Artist-in-Residence

✍🏼 Due 9/30: Texas Review Press X. J. Kennedy Poetry Prize

✍🏼 Due 9/30: Univ. of Massachusetts Press Juniper Prize for Creative Non-Fiction

🎃 October Deadlines

🎨✍🏼🎼 Due 10/1: Millay Arts Residency

✍🏼 Due 10/1: Washington Square New Voices Award (nonfiction)

🎨 Due 10/6: LACE 2025 Lightning Fund

✍🏼 Due 10/31: River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Book Prize Submission

🎨 Application opens in October: The Bray Foundation Artist Residencies

☕️ November Deadlines

🎨 Due 11/1: Museum of Glass 2025 Visiting Artist

✍🏼 Due 11/4: Northern California Writers' Retreat 2025

🎨 Due 11/7: Clay Studio of Missoula “It’s the Little Things” Juried Show

🎨 Due 11/15: Women’s Studio Workshop Artist’s Book Residency Grant

✍🏼 Due 11/30: Red Hen Press Quill (Queer) Prose Award

⛷December Deadlines

🎨 Due 12/19: Archie Bray Foundation Resident Artist Application 2025

It’s August, somehow! Whoever decided that needs to relax. Time is flying by, at least for me.

The news cycle feels even more chaotic in the time between sending last month’s newsletter and sitting down to write this one. I hope you’re taking care of yourself, whatever that means for you.

Keep scrolling for 20+ opportunities and this month’s letter. Thanks for reading!

~~~

🍁 August Deadlines

🎨 Rolling deadline: Farm, Flock and Fiber Artist in Resident Program

🎨 Due 8/23: Vashon Artist Residency

🎨 Due 8/26: CCI Artistic Innovation grants (Bay Area artists)

✍🏼 Due 8/31: Storyknife Writers Retreat

✍🏼 Due 8/31: Corning Museum of Glass BIPOC Artist Residency

🎨 Due 8/31: Liu Shiming Artist Grants

✍🏼 Due 8/31: Gemini Magazine Flash Fiction Contest

✍🏼 Due 8/31: 2024 University of New Orleans Press Publishing Lab Prize

✍🏼 Due 8/31: Gulf Coast magazine 2024 Barthelme Prize for Short Prose

🌲 September Deadlines

🎶✍🏼🎨 Due 9/1: Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts Artist Residency (reply to this email if you’re interested, I just finished a residency here)

🎨 Due 9/4: CCI Tools & Equipment grant (Bay Area artists)

✍🏼 Due 9/5: Dogwood: A Journal of Poetry 2025 literary prizes

🎨✍🏼 Due 9/10: Princeton University Hodder Fellowship

🎨 Due 9/12: Harvard University Radcliffe Fellowship (humanities, social sciences, and creative arts)

🎨✍🏼 Due 9/15: Monson Arts Residency

💭 Due 9/21: Visiting Senior Fellowships at National Gallery of Art

🎨 Due 9/27: Submissions: Annual Cup Show at The Worcester Center for Crafts

✍🏼 Due 9/30: Texas Review Press George Garrett Fiction Prize

🎨✍🏼 Due 9/30: Acadia National Park Artist-in-Residence

✍🏼 Due 9/30: Texas Review Press X. J. Kennedy Poetry Prize

✍🏼 Due 9/30: University of Massachusetts Press Juniper Prize for Creative Non-Fiction

In the near future:

🎨 Application opens in October: The Bray Foundation Artist Residencies

🎨✍🏼🎼 Due 10/1: Millay Arts Residency

✍🏼 Due 10/1: Washington Square New Voices Award (nonfiction)

🎨 Due 11/1: Museum of Glass 2025 Visiting Artist

🎨 Due 11/7: Clay Studio of Missoula “It’s the Little Things” Juried Show

🎨 Due 11/15: Women’s Studio Workshop Artist’s Book Residency Grant

✍🏼 Due 11/30: Red Hen Press Quill (Queer) Prose Award

What do you do with those threads of curiosity that weave themselves into your practice?

I’m certainly not the most expert researcher out there, but a decade of writing (and many years of reading) has certainly helped me work those muscles. When I say “expert researcher,” what I usually think of is a PhD scholar, a Doctor of some expertise, or an academic of many, many years. But there’s one thing that doesn’t require a degree or tons of experience: curiosity.

I tend to save artworks and artists that pique my interest in my Notion folder under “idea threads.” I also dump essay and story notes in there, but I mostly use it to save visual artists and artworks that don’t fit into any assignments I’m working on at the moment, but that I’d love to pursue in the future. Maybe, if I find time. Maybe, if I can find more info.

Then, I go back to tug on the thread when I get a minute or two.

But sometimes, the thread finds me. And it wraps itself a little tighter around my brain, so that I can’t help but WANT to find out more.

This happened when I first learned about the work of Toshiko Takaezu, an artist known primarily for her ceramic work.

Read more

Hello, it’s July! This month, I’m focusing on looking backwards, something that can feel difficult when so much of creative life can center on looking towards the future. For example: this newsletter is about things you can apply to in the near future. But what about the work you’ve already put in? How can we sit with that work for a little while?

Keep scrolling for 20+ opportunities and this month’s letter. Much love!

~~~

🏖 July Deadlines 🏖

🎨 Due 7/15: Project Gallery July 2024 Artist Grant

🎨 Due 7/15: Grand Canyon National Park Artist in Residence (for artists focusing on site-specific community engagement, social practice and immersive/ interactive artworks)

🎨 Due 7/16: New Jersey State Council on the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship

🎨 Due 7/20: Queer | Art | Mentorship (film, performance, literature, visual art)

✍🏼 Due 7/21: Wave Hill 2025 Sunroom Project Space

🎨 Due 7/30: Rauschenberg Dancer Emergency Grants Cycle 13

✍🏼 Due 7/31: Walter Dean Myers Grant (for diverse writers and illustrators who are currently unpublished)

🎨 Due 7/31: SHIFT: A Residency for Arts Workers

✍🏼 Due 7/31: Sarabande Books July Open (for poetry, short fiction and literary nonfiction manuscripts)

✍🏼 Due 7/31: Sewanee Review Fiction, Poetry and Nonfiction Contest

🍁 August Deadlines 🍁

🎨 Due 8/1: Museum of Chinese in America Performing Artist-In-Residence Program

🎨 Due 8/1: Seattle Art Museum Betty Bowen Award (Northwest artists)

🎥 Due 8/1: Lynn Shelton “Of a Certain Age” Grant (for individual woman, non-binary, and/or transgender U.S. filmmaker, age 39 or older, who is working on their first narrative feature)

✍🏼 Due 8/2: Oregon Literary Fellowships

🎨 Due 8/4: 2025 Fountainhead Residency (for South Florida visual artists)

🎨 Due 8/12: Alternative Exposure Grants (Bay Area visual arts projects)

🎨 Due 8/15: The Arts Council for Long Beach Microgrants

✍🏼 Due 8/23: Call for Anthology Submissions—Compton: Reflections on Art and the City

✍🏼 Due 8/31: Storyknife Writers Retreat

🎨 Due 8/31: Liu Shiming Artist Grants

In the near future:

💭 Applications now open: The Getty Scholars Program

💭 Applications opening 8/30: The Huntington Museum Fellowships

🎨 Applications opening 7/15: South Arts Individual Artist Career Opportunity Grant

I graduated from college a little more than a decade ago and the recent graduation season made me think back to that time. I’m also revising work that goes back to the days when I was dealing with depression while also trying to finish my degree.

College me wanted: good grades, praise, the feeling of being smart and accomplished. She wanted to be as good as everyone else on that sprawling campus — just as intelligent and talented and beautiful as the people riding their beach cruisers to class alongside her.

She wanted: more bylines, a job writing full-time. She wanted to publish a book. She wanted to prove that she could do something big. She wanted to prove that she was so, so grateful for all the efforts her family made to get her a good education.

Writing this feels like sitting down with her. I’d like to say: you did so much, but you also lived. You figured out that’s the most important part.

You have laughed so much. You have fought against the sadness and the feeling that you’re not good enough. We haven’t always won, but we’ve made strides.

I’m often looking ahead, planning the next step: a new freelance assignment, a new opportunity to travel, a new goal I want to meet. I still hold my writing dreams close, But now, I also remind myself to try and pause once in a while.

Read more

Oh hi! Wishing you a productive June, BUT ALSO, a restful one.

Keep scrolling for 20+ opportunities for creatives, and this month’s letter.

~~~

😎 June Deadlines 😎

💭 Due 6/15: Open call: Exhibiting Artists’ Books convening

🎨 Due 6/16: APAture Showcase Application (Asian Pacific American emerging artists)

🎨 Due 6/30: Illuminations Grant for Black Trans Women Visual Artists

✍🏼 Due 6/30: YesYes Books 2024 Pamet River Prize

💭 Due 6/30: 2025 Centrum Artists-In-Residence program

✍🏼 Due 6/30: The Los Angeles Review writing awards

✍🏼 Due 6/30: Lascaux Prize in Flash Fiction

🏖 July Deadlines 🏖

✍🏼 Due 7/1: Peters Valley Fall Guest Artist Residency Program

✍🏼 Due 7/2: Bellevue Literary Review Prizes (for writing on health, healing, illness, the mind, and the body)

🎨 Due 7/2: Penland Resident Artist Program

🎨 Due 7/4: Franklin Furnace Fund – 2024–25 XENO Prize for Artists’ Books

🎨 Due 7/5: The VH AWARD (for emerging media artists who engage with the context of Asia)

🎨 Due 7/6: The Max Thelen Studio Residency (California artists)

🎨 Due 7/11: City of Walnut Creek Public Art RFQ

🎨 Due 7/15: UCross Fellowship for Native American Visual Artists

🎨 Due 7/15: Loghaven Artist Residency (writing, visual arts, dance, theater, music composition, architecture, interdisciplinary work)

✍🏼 Due 7/15: Unleash Work-in-Progress (WIP) Award 2024

🎨 Due 7/16: New Jersey State Council on the Arts Individual Artist Fellowships

🎨 Due 7/20: Queer | Art | Mentorship (film, performance, literature, visual art)

✍🏼 Due 7/21: Wave Hill 2025 Sunroom Project Space

🍁 August Deadlines 🍁

🎨 Due 8/1: Seattle Art Museum Betty Bowen Award (Northwest artists)

🎥 Due 8/1: Lynn Shelton “Of a Certain Age” Grant (for individual woman, non-binary, and/or transgender U.S. filmmaker, age 39 or older, who is working on their first narrative feature)

🎨 Due 8/12: Alternative Exposure Grants (Bay Area visual arts projects)

💭 Applications opening 8/30: The Huntington Museum Fellowships

I’ve done a similar version of this newsletter topic in the past, but it feels like a good time to do another one. Time management, and energy management, have been on my mind as I prepare for a summer focused on writing, research and learning.

These approaches have helped me recently, so I’m sharing them in case they resonate with you, too.

Notion: Previously, I used a physical planner to plan out both my deadlines and personal schedule. But in the last couple of years, I started using Notion for my freelance deadlines and project ideas. You can find free templates (some cost money) to use, and I currently utilize a few to me my keep notes, deadlines and invoicing information organized. I needed something to help me track my freelance work year by year, and Notion does the trick. If you don’t know where to start, the templates are also a good source of inspiration.

Google Doc Tools: There are some new (to me) tools in Google Docs now. When you make a blank document, you can choose from smart tools like “Review Tracker,” which I find useful as a visual for your progress. The columns are “reviewer,” “status” and “notes,” but you can change the column names. I find the “status” button especially useful, because give me a quick glance as to where I stand. It’s also satisfying to change the project status to “done” — or whichever word you use to signal when a project is “completed.”

Boomerang (Gmail): I love to schedule emails. If I know I need to draft an email, or a follow-up, but I don’t want it to go out immediately, I use Boomerang to schedule it for the next morning or a few days from now. For example, if I finish drafting a pitch, but it’s late at night, I just paste it into an email for its intended editor and schedule it for the morning. That way, I don’t have to worry about WHERE I left my notes.

Read more

~~~

Welcome to another month of Notes from Eva. A quick note: thank you thank you thank you! To everyone who keeps supporting this newsletter, whether through shares, replies or paid subscriptions. I appreciate it so so much.

Do you have a question about the creative life that you want answered? Hit REPLY and let me know—for a new audio project I’m working on.

Wishing you a great month, and lots of creative juice for your goals/interests/curiosities.

Keep scrolling for 20+ opportunities for creatives, and this month’s letter.

~~~

🌷 May Deadlines 🌷

💭 Due 5/10: LA County Open Call: Art Consultants Prequalified List (RFSQ)

🎨 Due 5/15: Crafting the Future (CTF) Artist Grants (for BIPOC artists)

🎨 Due 5/15: CTF Los Angeles Artist Residency (for BIPOC Artists)

✍🏼 Due 5/17: Associates of the Boston Public Library Writer-in-Residence

✍🏼 Due 5/19: Anne LaBastille Memorial Writers Residency

✍🏼 Due 5/19: CRAFT 2024 Short Fiction Prize

📸 Due 5/21: The JGS Fellowship for Photography (New York state photographers)

🎨 Due 5/26: Open Call: Art in Odd Places 2024

✍🏼 Due 5/30: C New Critics Award for Emerging Art Critics (Canada-based/Canadian)

🎨 Due 5/31: Eliza Moore Fellowship for Artistic Excellence (for artists developing new works that address plants, gardens, or landscape)

🎨 Due 5/31: Joshua Tree National Park Artist in Residence Program

🎶 Due 5/31: Glendale Arts & Culture FY 2024-2025 Performing Arts Grants (Arizona)

💭 Due 5/31: Oak Spring Garden Foundation Interdisciplinary Residency

✍🏼 Due 5/31: The Center for Fiction / Susan Kamil Emerging Writer Fellowships

😎 June Deadlines 😎

🎨 Due 6/1: Nopoint Atelier Traveling Residency 2024

🎨 Due 6/7: The Disruptors Fellowship (TV writing, for writers of color)

🎨 Due 6/10: Headlands Center for the Arts Artist in Residence

🎨 Due 6/15: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers Emerging Artist Award

🎥 Due 6/18: The Ryan Hudak LGBTQ+ Dramatic Writing Award (for queer NY state-based playwright/screenwriter)

🎨 Due 6/30: Illuminations Grant for Black Trans Women Visual Artists

✍🏼 Due 6/30: YesYes Books 2024 Pamet River Prize

🏖 July Deadlines 🏖

🎨 Due 7/4: Franklin Furnace Fund – 2024–25 XENO Prize for Artists’ Books

🎨 Due 7/6: The Max Thelen Studio Residency (California artists)

Last month, I had the huge privilege of traveling to Guatemala, which I hadn’t done since I was aboooooout 15 years old. It felt like visiting for the first time ever, in some ways. My eyes felt so much more open to everything. I asked more questions. I looked more closely. I took lots of photos.

In some ways, I felt the pressure to write something before I even arrived. I knew that this was going to a be an important trip. I knew that writing is the way I process things. And I naturally love to share those things, especially all the sights I see. I’ve always found joy in writing about even the smallest of sights, and Guatemala offered me so much: tortillerias, hand-painted signs, stunning cloud formations, colorful murals, bold textiles

I recently texted a friend (hi Jessica!) about thinking through the ways in which my writing bleeds into so many parts of my life.

As I’m sure happens to you I’m def like “do I write about this or let it be its own experience?” Does everything need to be written about with the intent that it’ll be read?

As usual, I sought out the wisdom of friends—my chat with Jessica felt affirming. I did take a journal with me to Guatemala but I didn’t write every day. I was soaking it all in, instead.

I couldn’t help but think about the film “Kiki’s Delivery Service” and how the protagonist, a young witch, struggles to fly on her broom like she used to. One of the themes of the movie touches on artistic inspiration and creating.

Although the movie focuses on learning not to force things—because inspiration often doesn’t come from squeezing too hard—I remembered this thread in the movie because I think it also applies here. Sometimes we feel we have to know exactly how we are going to use creative input (i.e. a major travel event) to create something. Sometimes I try to plan out ahead of time how I might turn an important moment into a piece of writing. It’s because that’s what I love doing. But it also creates pressure that’s not there to begin with.

Read more

~~~

My Domestika course, “How to Write a Human Interest Story,” is live! Learn how to prepare to interview a fascinating person, and how to outline a profile article about your subject.

~~~

Keep scrolling for 20+ opportunities for creatives, and this month’s letter.

🌦 April Deadlines

• ✍🏼 Due 4/7: Triple Canopy Publication Intensive

• ✍🏼 Due 4/15: West Hollywood Open Call for Graphic Artists: Winter Season Artwork

• 🎨 Due 4/16: Anonymous Was A Woman Environmental Art Grants

• 🎨 Due 4/18: SOZO Fellowship Pilot (US-based independent artists, preference for performing arts, new media or mixed media)

• 🎭 Due 4/19: Directors Lab West 2024 Summer Intensive (for stage directors and choreographers)

• 🎨 Due 4/26: The City of Burbank Call for Artists: Artistic Shade Structure

  (Johnny Carson Park)

• 🎨 Due 4/29: California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists (LA County)

• ✍🏼 Due 4/30: Inlandia Institute Hillary Gravendyk Poetry Book Prize

• ✍🏼 Due 4/30: AWP HBCU Fellowship Program

• 🎨 Due 4/30: The Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture Call for Artists

• ✍🏼 Due 4/30: F(r)iction Short Story, Flash Fiction, Poetry Contests

• ✍🏼 Due 4/30: Letras Boricuas Fellowship (Puerto Rican writers)

🌷 May Deadlines

• ✍🏼 Due 5/1: University of Arkansas Press Etel Adnan Poetry Prize

• ✍🏼 Due 5/1: Martha’s Vineyard Writer Fellowships

• ✍🏼 Due 5/1: Foglifter fiction submissions

• 🎨 Due 5/1: Fort Union National Monument October 2024 Artist in Residency (multidisciplinary)

• ✍🏼 Due 5/1: 2024 Noemi Press Book Award for Poetry

• 🎨 Due 5/1: West Hollywood Moving Image Media Art Program Prequalified List (RFQ)

• 💭 Due 5/2: 2024 Processing Foundation Fellowship Program (artists, coders, and collectives)

• 🎨 Due 5/6: Marble House Project residency (multidisciplinary)

• ✍🏼 Due 5/13: Los Angeles Press Club Tony Ross Scholarship

• ✍🏼 Due 5/13: Los Angeles Press Club Reporting on Systemic Racism Grant

• ✍🏼 Due 5/13: Los Angeles Press Club Charles M. Rappleye Investigative Journalism Award

• 🎨 Due 5/14: The Hopper Prize

• ✍🏼 Due 5/19: Anne LaBastille Memorial Writers Residency

• ✍🏼 Due 5/19: CRAFT 2024 Short Fiction Prize

• ✍🏼 Due 5/30: C New Critics Award for Emerging Art Critics (Canada-based/Canadian)

• 🎨 Due 5/31: Eliza Moore Fellowship for Artistic Excellence (for artists developing new works that address plants, gardens, or landscape)

• 🎨 Due 5/31: Joshua Tree National Park Artist in Residence Program

😎 June Deadlines

• 🎨 Due 6/15: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers Emerging Artist Award

• 🎨 Due 6/30: Illuminations Grant for Black Trans Women Visual Artists

This Month’s Note: How to Start a New Project

Hello from month #4 of full-time freelancing. Shifting away from full-time work to full-time freelance has also given me some time to think about other ideas for creative projects. I’m interested in exploring new means of storytelling and connection. But oftentimes, I get in my own way. I want to brainstorm and tinker with an idea before I do anything. And sometimes, I stop myself before I even get started. Because, what if it’s not good enough? What if it kind of sucks?

This newsletter has given me the space to explore and write about topics in a way that’s more conversational. And I’m grateful to have this little space (and grateful to you, for reading!)

I really like this example from Beth Pickens’ “Make Your Art No Matter What” about conquering fear in the creative process. Pickens is a consultant for artists and art organizations, and her book has some really valuable gems.

Here’s one:

“When an artist has difficulty taking any kind of action, I work with them to examine the fear and break down a contrary action into micro-steps. I ask them to imagine themselves as a rock climber on a cliff… Knowing that they need to move, they want to move, and they no longer want to be stuck in this particular spot on the side of the cliff, I ask them to consider this, ‘What would be the smallest step that is movement but still feels safe?’ We parse out the task they are afraid of into the smallest, safest-feeling steps.”

I can often get ahead of myself, and question whether I can produce what I really want to make. Can I make it to that last step? But, the process is just as important. And I’ll never find out if I can create something if I don’t start with, at least, a small step.

I took a class with Sheree L. Greer a little while ago, and Sheree had us tape reminders/mottos to the wall near our desk, or in notebooks, as guideposts during our writing process. One of my chosen mottos was: I allow myself to explore stories — both big and small. I like to think about this in terms of projects and ideas, too.

So here I am trying it out myself: I’d like to start a new feature of the newsletter. Subscribers, you’re hearing it here first! I’m working on an audio project where I respond to questions and give pep talks to creatives. Think of it as your resource for getting questions answered. What do you wish you could ask a fellow creative? What’s on your mind regarding your creative process lately? What do you need advice on? Hit REPLY to send your question/pep talk request, so I can include it in the next month’s newsletter as part of this new, shiny project.

Read more