Guggenheim Fellowship

ABOUT

The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation was established in 1925 by Simon and Olga Guggenheim in memory of their son, and has since become one of the most prestigious mid-career awards in American arts and letters. Fellowships are given across dozens of fields—natural and social sciences, humanities, creative arts—with poetry considered under the Foundation's literary categories alongside fiction and nonfiction. Past poetry and literature fellows include Langston Hughes, and the Foundation's roster over its first century spans Nobel laureates, MacArthur fellows, and canonical American writers. Winners are chosen by a committee following peer review of nominations and letters of reference, with no interview stage; there is no coursework, residency, or product requirement attached to the award beyond the proposed project.

Applications are free and open annually, typically due in mid-September for US and Canadian citizens/permanent residents (a separate Latin American and Caribbean competition runs on its own calendar). Applicants submit a project proposal, CV, and letters of recommendation through the Foundation's online portal; there is no reading fee. Fellows are announced the following spring (recent cycles in April). Award amounts are not fixed or publicly guaranteed by the Foundation but have historically been reported in the tens of thousands of dollars, disbursed as a lump sum with no strings on how it's spent. Given the volume of applicants (typically several thousand) against a few hundred fellowships awarded across all fields, the odds for any single poet are long, and strong institutional letters of reference matter more than in journal-style submissions.