Submissions are open for the 2022 PEN/Jean Stein Grants for Literary Oral History, which lend support to writers at work on “literary works of nonfiction that use oral history to illuminate an event, individual, place, or movement.” While the award was previously presented to a single recipient, this will be the second cycle in which PEN America offers two grants of $15,000 each.
Using online the online submission system, submit three statements, a curriculum vitae, a project outline, a writing sample of 20 to 40 pages from the project, and 6 to 10 pages of unedited interview transcripts relevant to the sample by June 1. There is no entry fee. Only unpublished works-in-progress are eligible. No submission may be slated for publication earlier than April 1, 2022. Visit the website for complete guidelines.
The PEN/Jean Stein Grants are named in honor of the author and editor Jean Stein, who died in 2017. Stein was well known for her literary oral histories, including books on Robert Kennedy and Edie Sedgwick. Last year’s grant recipients were Helen Benedict, whose work-in-progress chronicles the lives of refugees of Greece, and Brett Ashley Robinson, whose project reckons with the history of the 1985 MOVE bombing in Philadelphia.