I’ve been awarded a Tulsa Artist Fellowship for 2019! This is a radical program aimed at building a thriving arts community in Tulsa by recruiting artists and then providing them with unrestricted creative freedom (and a comfortable middle-class existence)!
TAF is different than any other creative fellowship I’ve heard of. It includes an unrestricted $20,000 stipend, distributed in monthly installments over the fellowship’s 11-month term, plus a furnished rent-free apartment (wifi, util included) in Tulsa’s burgeoning arts district, and a furnished rent-free writing studio. Plus, plus, plus. With this year’s invited fellows, the TAF community reaches 59 artists. I met some of them at an open house in early September and WOW—they are doing brilliant, head-exploding work across media and astral planes.
I’m looking forward to buckling down and finishing the manuscript of Dad Rock, embarking on the next career steps and projects, as well as engaging with TAF and Tulsa. Planning to spend plenty of time at the Woody Guthrie Center (and hopefully the Bob Dylan archives)!
In other news from the last few months, Djerassi was incredible. I got rejections from The Atlantic, Lit Hub, and Buzzfeed, plus a lovely considered rejection from Longreads. And I was apparently thisclose to receiving a grant from the Greater Baltimore Arts Council, so I’ll be applying again next chance I get. Edgar’s stellar book blurbs are rolling in, and that shit is getting very exciting.
Here’s the intro of Scorceses’s No Direction Home: