01 Jan Apply for the 2025 JBWC Poetry Fellowship!
Applications for the 2025 JBWC Poetry Fellowship are officially open as of today, January 1, 2025!
Each year, Just Buffalo invites adult poets of all ages and stages of their career to apply for its Poetry Fellowship, which gives one talented writer a cash stipend to live and write in one of the nation’s most vibrant literary cities, plus an opportunity to read at an event curated by Just Buffalo Literary Center.
The Fellowship Award
- A $2,000 stipend
- One month of free lodging during August in a beautiful apartment in one of Buffalo’s most vibrant neighborhoods
- An opportunity to read at the Silo City Reading Series
Important Dates for the 2025 JBWC Poetry Fellowship
Application Deadline: Friday, February 28, 2025 @ 11:59 p.m.
Residency Period: August 2025
How to Apply
Guidelines for applying and submitting applications are available at Submittable, at the link below:
Applications will be reviewed in March and early April, with the Fellow and all applicants notified of status by the end of April. A public announcement will follow.
Eligibility Requirements
- Applicants must be 21 years or older
- A completed application must be received by 11:59 p.m. on the deadline (incomplete applications will NOT be considered)
- Past or present employees of Just Buffalo Literary Center are NOT eligible to apply
Our 2025 Judge: Donika Kelly
DONIKA KELLY is the author of The Renunciations (Graywolf), winner of the Anisfield-Wolf book award in poetry, and Bestiary (Graywolf), the winner of the 2015 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Poetry and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Kelly’s poetry has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Publishing Triangle Awards, the Lambda Literary Awards, and longlisted for the National Book Award. A Cave Canem graduate fellow and member of the collective Poets at the End of the World, she has received an NEA fellowship, a Lannan Residency Fellowship, and a summer workshop fellowship from the Fine Arts Work Center. She earned an MFA from the Michener Center at the University of Texas at Austin and a PhD in English from Vanderbilt University. Her poems have been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. Donika lives in Iowa City with her wife, the nonfiction writer Melissa Febos, and is an associate professor in the English Department at the University of Iowa, where she teaches creative writing.
The JBWC Poetry Fellowship
Visit our Poetry Fellowship page to learn more!