Starshine and Clay
Cave Canem and EcoTheo Collective are pleased to announce the 2024 Starshine and Clay Fellowship. Developed in 2020, this initiative provides financial and developmental support to emerging Black poets. Named in honor of Cave Canem elder Lucille Clifton (“won’t you celebrate with me”), the Starshine and Clay Fellowship was developed to speak to the mentorship Clifton offered Cave Canem fellows during her tenure as faculty at the Cave Canem Retreat.
Award: Two recipients will each receive $500 for a featured reading at the 2024 Wonder Festival. Fellowship recipients will also receive a one-on-one consultation with aracelis girmay. Additionally, the fellows’ work will be published in an issue of EcoTheo Review.
Deadline: Applications must be received via Submittable by December 17th, 2023 at 11:59 p.m. EST. Recipients will be notified by email on April 18, 2023.
Entry Fee: There is no entry fee for this fellowship application.
Judge: aracelis girmay
Eligibility: All adult Black writers who have not had a full-length book published by or currently under contract with a professional press. Authors of chapbooks and self-published books with a maximum print run of 500 may apply.
About the Judge:
aracelis girmay is a poet and teacher who makes work across genres. In collaboration with artist Valentina Améstica and the Center for Book Arts, a limited edition chapbook of her new work will be out in the fall (2023). She is the editor of So We Can Know: Writers of Color on Pregnancy, Loss, Abortion, and Birth (Haymarket, 2023) and is the editor-at-large of the Blessing the Boats Selections. She is also on the editorial board of the African Poetry Book Fund. For her work Girmay was a finalist for the Neustadt International Prize for Literature.