Wallace Stegner Fellowship

Stanford's Stegner Fellowship, founded by Wallace Stegner in 1946, is the most coveted post-degree apprenticeship in American writing: two years in the workshop with no degree, no tuition, and no teaching requirement — just a living stipend (recently around $50,000 per year plus benefits) and the company of five other poets chosen from over a thousand applicants.

Poetry fellows have included Robert Pinsky, Robert Hass, and Philip Levine. Applications open in the early fall and close December 1; the reading fee is modest and the odds are brutal, but nothing else buys a poet two funded years with zero obligations.