The Season of Open Grant Applications for Writers is Now.

Over the course of the next four weeks I need to complete and return three different grant applications. Each of these grants is to help fund individual writers as they pursue their artistic careers. I’ve applied for several of these grants before and have yet to win, but hope always springs eternal. That I know I can write a winning grant application helps. I won over $50,000 for the puppets back when I was their office manager.

Two of the grants are very similar and have a similar application process. The VSA Minnesota Emerging Artist with Disabilities Grants and the Beyond the Pure Fellowship for Writers are both funded by the Jerome Foundation. The first is for up to $1500, for artist with disabilities who are in the process of creating new work. I plan to focus on my emerging storytelling/spoken-word career, with emphasize on creating work about living with a disability. The second grant is for $4000. The emphasize is more on how the money will help you as an artist, but still favor applications with a clear project. The grant also is aimed at communities and writers belonging to groups who are traditionally undeserved in mainstream literature. I plan to work the disabled prose writer writing about characters with disabilities as the focus of the work.

The third grant is the McKnight Fellowship. This one is for writers who have shown professional aptitude by having published a novel, a collection, or at least six short stories in three different publications. I meet all that criteria easily enough. The Fellowship is for $25,000. While the first two have very detailed needs – such as artist statements, and budgets, and needing your artistic resume, and a detailed plan on how you plan to use the money to advance you career – all the McKnight wants is a writing sample. That’s it. $25,000 hinges on the writing sample.

So my question to you who have read my work is: what do you think is my strongest work? Because I need a writing sample for all three grants / fellowships, though for the VSA grant I will likely use my script from Tellebration 2011. I am inclined to take pages from Should We Drown in Feathered Sleep, which I think is my strongest piece of writing and the work most likely to be acceptable to judges who might not be speculative fiction readers. It’s probably my most “literary” work, with the fantastical element being closer to what is labeled magical realism, though I would call it post-apocalyptic rural Minnesota fantasy.

So, I’m soliciting you opinions. Go!