2021 Real People, Real Struggles, Real Stories – Writing about Mental Illness Fellowship

The Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow is offering a fellowship to a writer working on a short or long work of non-fiction focusing on how they (the writer or another) have managed, and continue to manage, their mental illness. This personal story should offer not just insight and awareness, but most importantly, hope. It should share your dreams, and how you are adjusting and fine-tuning them. Stories focused on relationships, family life, travel, employment, civic contributions, passions, along with the barriers, fears, and stigmas faced, are encouraged. For the purposes of this fellowship, the writing should be non-fiction, and can take the form of memoir, personal essay, profile, or biography. The successful application will demonstrate insight, honesty, literary merit, and the likelihood of publication.

The fellowship winner will receive a two-week residency to allow the recipient to focus completely on their work. Each writer’s suite has a bedroom, private bathroom, separate writing space, and wireless internet. We provide uninterrupted writing time, a European-style gourmet dinner prepared five nights a week and served in our community dining room, the camaraderie of other professional writers when you want it, and a community kitchen stocked with the basics for breakfast and lunch. Fellows are given the opportunity to participate in the community outreach of their choice and are provided the chance to be published in eMerge, the online literary magazine of the Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow.

Fellowship applications must be accompanied by a writing sample and a non-refundable $35 application fee. Writers proposing more than one project must submit a separate application and fee for each one. The submission period opens on Tuesday, June 1, 2021. Deadline is midnight on Monday, August 30, 2021. The winner will be announced no later than September 10, 2021. Residency must be completed by December 31, 2022.

The Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow would like to thank long-time supporter and board member Sharon Spurlin for generously funding this fellowship.