The Heartland Journalism Residency Fellowship

This fellowship is designed to support the development of student writers who are interested in finding their voice and developing their craft as serious, trained writers for non-academic audiences. Fellows are required to complete a project that would produce two or more pieces of long-form journalism and several related blog posts on various subjects or a series of well-constructed, engaging personal essays. The pieces will initially appear in The Common Reader but would also be available for use by other university entities. The fellows will also retain the rights to use the work in any future projects as long as it is acknowledged that the work first appeared in The Common Reader. The fellows would be supervised by Gerald Early, Merle Kling Professor of Modern Letters in the Departments of English and African and African American Studies, supported by Ben Fulton, managing editor of The Common Reader. They would also have the opportunity to interact with staff writers Jeannette Cooperman, veteran St. Louis journalist, and John Griswold, creative long-form essayist. We will offer up to three graduate fellowships of $8,000 each. The fellows are expected to produce a minimum of 7,000 words each over the course of the academic year.

The fellowships are open to all fully matriculated Washington University students in good academic standing in a degree-granting program who are currently in residence in St. Louis. We encourage first-generation and students from low-income families to apply. The fellow must be in residence in St. Louis for the term of the fellowship. All candidates will be interviewed by a special selection committee that will include representatives from The Common Reader and relevant faculty.