March 25, 2003  Brown University announces and seeks applications for an innovative new writing program—The International Writers Project Fellowship. The one-year resident Fellowship aims to support international creative writers—fiction, dramatists, and poets—who risk danger within their home country for artistic free expression.

Note: Application Deadline is April 15, 2003. See below for further application information.

Free expression, especially creative writing, is still challenged by regimes throughout the world. More than a third of the world's population lives in countries where freedom of the press is actively hindered, and writers regularly experience censorship and persecution when publishing their works.

Brown University's new program makes available to an international writer, who works fiction, drama, or poetry, a one-year residency to practice their craft in safety within a supportive environment. All prospective applicants should have a significant publication record.

Brown University has a tradition of welcoming international writers who have experienced censorship. Beginning in 1989, novelist Robert Coover invited three distinguished Chinese writers to join the Creative Writing Program following the Tian'anmem Square incident. The program has since grown to include writers from China, Cuba, and Somalia. It has also hosted several international writing conferences drawing an international array of exiled writers.

The International Writers Project Fellowship will provide a full-year residence to a prospective Fellow, who will have available the full resources and support of Brown faculty and students, especially at the Creative Writing Program and the Watson Institute for International Studies. The program each year will also feature a speaker series focused on human rights and free expression globally and a festival highlighting the particular national artistic and political identity of the resident writer.

The Fellowship program is a partnership between Brown's Creative Writing Program and the Watson Institute for International Studies. The William H. Donner Foundation is funding the program.

The application deadline is April 15, 2003. The Fellowship includes a living stipend, relocation funds, and health benefits. The University will include a stipend, relocations funds, and health benefits. Brown will aid the writer in the visa and relocation process and provide administrative support, office space, and equipment.

Please contact and send a letter of application
or nomination and CV to Professor Robert Coover; Robert_Coover@brown.edu; or Department of English,
Box 1852, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912; or 401.863.1152 (T); or 401.863.1535 (F).