Today, the National Endowment for the Arts announced that Chicago-based writer Frances de Pontes Peebles is one of 36 writers who will receive an FY 2020 Creative Writing Fellowship of $25,000. These fellowships enable the recipients to set aside time for writing, research, travel, and general career advancement. Fellows are selected through a highly-competitive, anonymous process and are judged on the artistic excellence of the work sample provided.
“The National Endowment for the Arts is proud to support our nation’s writers, including Frances de Pontes Peebles, and the artistry, creativity, and dedication that go into their work,” said Mary Anne Carter, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts.
Frances was selected from nearly 1,700 eligible applicants. Fellowships alternate between poetry and prose each year and this year’s fellowships are to support prose writers. The full list of FY 2020 Creative Writing Fellows is available here.
Frances de Pontes Peebles is the author of the novels The Air You Breathe and The Seamstress. Her work has been translated into ten languages and won the Elle Grand Prix for fiction, the Friends of American Writers Award, and O. Henry Prize Stories. She has received fellowships from Fulbright, the James Michener-Copernicus Society of America, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and Brazil’s Sacatar Foundation. Born in Brazil and raised in Miami, she is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she also served as Visiting Professor of Fiction. She currently serves on the Board of the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights.
Since 1967, the Arts Endowment has awarded more than 3,500 Creative Writing Fellowships totaling over $55 million. Many American recipients of the National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and Pulitzer Prize in Poetry and Fiction were recipients of National Endowment for the Arts fellowships early in their careers.
Visit the agency’s Literature Fellowships webpage to read excerpts by and features on past Creative Writing Fellows and recipients of Literature Fellowships for translation projects. For more information on literature at the National Endowment for the Arts, go to arts.gov.