Creative Writing Professor Chris McCormick Receives National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship
The National Endowment for the Arts announced that Chris McCormick is one of 35 writers selected to receive an FY 2024 Creative Writing Fellowship of $25,000. This year’s fellowships are in fiction and creative nonfiction and enable the recipients to set aside time for writing, research, travel, and general career development. Fellows are selected through an anonymous review process and are judged based on the artistic excellence of the work sample they provided. These fellowships are highly competitive, with more than 2,100 eligible applications received for FY 2024. NEA Director of Literary Arts Amy Stolls said, “The National Endowment for the Arts is proud to continue its longstanding investment in our nation’s writers. It is through their creativity and dedication that our nation’s literary landscape continues to be enriched with stories, perspectives, and ideas that reflect the rich diversity of cultures and strengthen our democracy.”
Chris McCormick is the author of a novel, The Gimmicks, a New York Times Editors' Choice, and a short story collection, Desert Boys, winner of the 2017 Stonewall Book Award—Barbara Gittings Literature Award. His essays and stories have appeared in The Atlantic, the Los Angeles Times, and The Southern Review. The son of an Armenian mother and an American father, he grew up in the Antelope Valley on the California side of the Mojave Desert before earning his BA from the University of California, Berkeley, and his MFA from the University of Michigan. He is an Associate Professor in the creative writing program at Minnesota State University, Mankato. Since 1967, the NEA has awarded more than 3,700 Creative Writing Fellowships totaling over $58 million. Many American recipients of the National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and Pulitzer Prize in Poetry and Fiction were recipients of National Endowment for the Arts fellowships early in their careers. Visit arts.gov to browse bios and artist statements from the 2024 recipients and past Creative Writing Fellows.
📸 Photo Credit: Jenna Meacham.
