How to acknowledge the work you've done

It's time to pause and look back.

Header illustration by Ludi Leiva.

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!

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✍🏼 Due 7/31: Walter Dean Myers Grant (for diverse writers and illustrators who are currently unpublished)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

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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.