(INDIANAPOLIS) – The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) recently announced its first round of grants for the fiscal year 2019, and two Hoosiers including an Indiana University English professor will be receiving Creative Writing Fellowship grants of $25,000 each.
The NEA will award 35 Creative Writing Fellowships in poetry totaling $875,000. Nearly 1,700 eligible applications were received and reviewed anonymously by a panel, resulting in a group of recipients from across the country, diverse in ethnicity and background. None of the 2019 recipients have previously received an NEA fellowship.
Indiana grant recipients are:
Indiana University’s associate professor of English Adrian Matejka
About Adrian Matejka
Adrian Matejka is the author of three collections of poetry: The Devil’s Garden (Alice James Books, 2003), Mixology (Penguin, 2009) which was a winner of the 2008 National Poetry Series and a finalist for an NAACP Image Award, and The Big Smoke (Penguin, 2013). He is the recipient of two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards and fellowships from Cave Canem and the Lannan Foundation. His work has appeared in American Poetry Review, The Best American Poetry, Ploughshares, and Poetry among other journals and anthologies. He is the co-director of the River Styx at the Tavern Reading Series in St. Louis.
Rachel Custer, Albion, Indiana
About Rachel Custer
Rachel Custer is the author of The Temple She Became (Five Oaks Press, 2017). She has previously published poetry, personal essays, and flash fiction in many literary journals. She lives in Albion, and her work is constantly informed by and wrestles with the values and struggles of the rural Rust Belt. Her Christian faith is vital to her understanding of the world and her art.
Visit the NEA’s Literature Fellowship webpage to read excerpts by and features on past Creative Writing Fellows and recipients of Literature Fellowships for translation projects.
