NEA cancels decades-long creative writing fellowship

Alice Walker. Charles Bukowski. Louise Erdrich. Juan Felipe Herrera. These are just some of the authors who received a Creative Writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts over the years. The fellowship has now been canceled.

The annual program was set up in 1966 to help foster American fiction, non-fiction and poetry. The latest iteration of the fellowship offered fiction and creative non-fiction writers a $50,000 grant. Applications were due in March and notifications were set to go out in December. But last week, notices were sent to applicants stating: “The NEA has cancelled the FY 2026 Creative Writing Fellowships program.”

The email, which has been posted by various authors on social media, states that the NEA is canceling grants that exist outside of the Trump administration’s priorities. NPR has reached out to the NEA for comment.

According to the email, the NEA is focused on projects supporting HBCUs, Hispanic serving institutions, the upcoming 250th anniversary of America’s independence, houses of worship, and “AI competency.”

Similar emails went out in May, when the Trump Administration began making large cuts to the NEA. The administration has proposed cutting the agency altogether. The NEA’s funding amounts to 0.003% of the total federal budget, according to the NEA.