When I was first allowed to announced the Fellowship, I told my friends I felt like Big Bird – and I still do: wide-eyed, joyful, and knowing that things wouldn’t be the same for me without the support of a generous government and the people who fight for it to fund our arts.
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To be judged worthy, to be acknowledged publicly: It’s sustaining in a different way than money could ever be.Įvery few years, some thick-eyebrowed political candidate questions the necessity of the NEA, and we shout our invectives at the TV – things about culture and priority – and every year (miraculously! vitally!) the NEA survives to keep more artists afloat, to keep our arts vibrant, to reward work that might be essential but not wildly commercial. (I’m working on a project about my grandparents’ tumultuous lives in Hungary in the 1930s, and I’m trying to get over there before the last people who remember them have died.) A previous NEA Fellow told me that “It’s not a life-changing amount of money, but it’s definitely a year-changing amount of money.” I’d add that if a year means a book I wouldn’t otherwise have written, then the fellowship will have changed my life.īut don’t underestimate the vote of confidence part! Few people are in literary fiction for their egos (You know the definition of literary fiction, right? It’s printed on paper made from that tree that fell in the woods when no one was around…) but that doesn’t mean we do our best work in a vacuum. I can afford not to teach as much this term, I can afford more childcare, I can even travel a bit for research.
The money is helpful in many quiet, pedestrian ways. An award like this is really two awards: the money part and the vote of confidence part.
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