Jack Hazard Fellowships Announced
OAKLAND, CA. September 21, 2021—The New Literary Project (NLP) is considering applications for 2022 Jack Hazard Fellowships for Creative Writers Teaching High School. This is an innovative and unique opportunity open for the first time to an underserved, and deserving, community of writers offered by NLP (formerly the Simpson Literary Project). Writers may apply between October 1, 2021 and December 31, 2021. The nonprofit NLP will offer fellowships every year, and expects to award nine $5,000 summer fellowships in Spring 2022 to California high school-based writers. In subsequent years NLP will consider applications from writers who teach high school anywhere in the United States. Details may be found here: https://www.newliteraryproject.org/jack-hazard-fellowships
Jack Hazard Fellows are writers of fiction, creative nonfiction, or memoir. They must be full-time, current, experienced instructors in an accredited California high school (grades 9–12, teaching in the 2021–22 academic year)—and contracted to return to their schools in Fall 2023. Applicants submit a writing sample along with other related support material requested. The goal is to reward and incentivize talented writers who teach in secondary schools. These writers who teach inspire their students, high schools, and communities, and provide professional example of writers working to find meaning and create art in these chaotic times. NLP celebrates their life-changing contributions, and gives them widespread public acknowledgement along with some much-needed freedom to devote to their own writing. For many writers who teach full time, that’s what summers are for.
The Jack Hazard Fellowship is sustained by the generosity of System Property, whose offices are in Sherman Oaks, California, and which conducts business nationwide. https://systemproperty.com/about
One hundred years ago, Mr. Hazard founded the company that has today become System Property. He was a larger-than-life, mostly self-educated, and deeply curious man who admired education and educators, and someone who loved to hear and tell a good story. As a charismatic, visionary entrepreneur and philanthropist, he had a profound, unforgettable impact that resonates to this day. The New Literary Project is honored to be associated with his legacy. We love a good story, too, and we believe that scores of good and great stories will come to life as a result of the annual Jack Hazard Fellowships.
So many writers started their careers as high school teachers, like Stephen King, Frank McCourt, JK Rowling, Joanne Harris, George Orwell, Dan Brown, and William Golding. The Hazard Fellowships will find and spotlight a new generation of dedicated creative writers who teach in high school. —Ian Maloney, Program Coordinator
Hazard Fellowships provide a service long overdue to support these talented writers, granting them time to work unencumbered. It marks another vital effort of the New Literary Project to find new writers and new stories to promote storytelling everywhere. —David Wood, NLP Board Member & high school teacher
The New Literary Project was established in 2016, and partners with the University of California, Berkeley, English Department. NLP fosters new literature, supports authors, and enhances the lives of readers, writers, educators, librarians, and students in diverse communities in California and the nation. It inspires and equips writers across the generations—in the words of Joyce Carol Oates—to “write their hearts out.” NLP awards the annual Joyce Carol Oates Prize, $50,000, to a mid-career author of fiction. The Project also offers to high school-age writers from underserved communities Simpson Writing Workshops, provided at no cost and led by Simpson Fellows, UC Berkeley graduate student creative writing teachers; this year workshops are expected to take place at Contra Costa County Juvenile Hall, Girls Inc. Alameda County, Northgate High School, and elsewhere. In addition, the Project edits an internationally distributed annual anthology of Project-related artists, including Prize winners and finalists along with younger writers appearing in print for the first time. Simpsonistas: Tales from the Simpson Literary Project Vol. 3 (Rare Bird) appeared in Winter 2021.