The Mark is seeking program applicants whose manuscripts are either completed or near completion.

Please note: Full manuscript will be required for faculty review before interview date.

• The Mark is an Emerging Voices alumni program. All applicants must have successfully completed an Emerging Voices Fellowship.
• Patron PEN membership is mandatory for all program participants.
• Mark participants must live in Los Angeles or within reasonable driving distance of the city, allowing them to attend classes and advisor meetings without complication.

2012/2013 Fiction/Nonfiction:

Antoine Wilson is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a contributing editor of A Public Space. He has been an instructor of creative writing at Iowa, Wisconsin, CSU Long Beach, UC San Diego, and UCLA Extension. His first novel is The Interloper, published by Other Press. Panorama City, Wilson’s second novel, is forthcoming from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in fall 2012. He grew up in Southern California and continues to live and surf in Los Angeles. He’s online at antoinewilson.com and on Twitter @antoinewilson.

Rob Roberge's fourth book, the novel The Cost of Living, is forthcoming from Other Voices Books (spring 2013). He’s a professor at UCR/Palm Desert’s MFA and has taught at the MFA program at Antioch, Los Angeles, and at the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program, where he received the Outstanding Instructor Award in Creative Writing in 2003. His stories and essays have appeared in numerous journals and have been anthologized several times. Previous books include the story collection Working Backwards From the Worst Moment of My Life and the novels More Than They Could Chew and Drive. He plays guitar and sings with the LA punk band The Urinals.

 

2011/2012 Fiction/Nonfiction:

Alan Watt is a novelist, playwright, screenwriter, and publisher. The 90-Day Novel, Watt’s nonfiction guide to writing, was published in 2010. His novel Diamond Dogs (Little, Brown) was a Los Angeles Times bestseller and was recognized in the New York Times list of “New and Notable Books.” Diamond Dogs has won numerous awards, including France’s 2004 Prix Printemps. Watt recently adapted Diamond Dogs for the French film company Quad. In 2002, Watt founded LA Writers’ Lab to help writers of all levels unlock the story within. His 90-Day Novel workshops in Los Angeles are now taught online to writers worldwide. Writers Tribe Books, his publishing venture, will release four works of literary fiction in the winter of 2012.

Samantha Dunn is the author of Failing Paris (Toby Press), a finalist for the PEN Center USA Literary Fiction Award in 2000; and the memoirs Not By Accident: Reconstructing a Careless Life (Henry Holt & Co.), a BookSense 76 pick; and Faith in Carlos Gomez: A Memoir of Salsa, Sex and Salvation (Henry Holt & Co.). Samantha’s work is anthologized in several places, including the short story anthology Women on the Edge: Writing from Los Angeles (Toby Press), which Dunn co-edited with writer Julianne Ortale. Dunn’s essays have appeared in numerous national publications including the Los Angeles Times; O, The Oprah Magazine; Ms.; Redbook; and Shape. In 2000, Dunn received the Maggie Award for Best Personal Essay in a Consumer Publication. A widely published journalist, Dunn’s bylines are regularly featured in InStyle, Glamour, SELF, Men’s Health, and a variety of other consumer magazines. A writer-in-residence at the New York State Summer Writers Institute for many years, Dunn currently teaches at the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program. Dunn lives in Southern California with her husband, musician/politico Jimmy Camp, and their son Ben.

 

2011/2012 Poetry:

Anna Journey is the author of the collection, If Birds Gather Your Hair for Nesting (University of Georgia Press, 2009), selected by Thomas Lux for the National Poetry Series. Her poems are published in American Poetry Review, FIELD, Kenyon Review, and Shenandoah, and her essays appear in At Length, Blackbird, Notes on Contemporary Literature, Parnassus, and Plath Profiles. Journey holds a PhD in creative writing and literature from the University of Houston, and she currently teaches creative writing at the University of Southern California. She recently received a fellowship in poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Gabrielle Calvocoressi is the author of The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart (Persea 2005) and Apocalyptic Swing (Persea 2009), which was
a finalist for The Los Angeles Times Book Award. She is the recipient
 of numerous awards and fellowships including a Stegner Fellowship and
 Jones Lectureship from Stanford University, a Rona Jaffe Woman
Writer's Award and a fellowship to Civitella di Ranieri in Umbria. Her 
poems have been featured in the Washington Post and on Garrison 
Keillor's Poet's Almanac and in numerous journals. She is the poetry editor for The Los Angeles Review of Books and is on the advisory 
board of The Rumpus' Poetry Book Club. Along with gallerist Heather 
Taylor she curates the acclaimed reading series, Eating Our Words
 (eatingrwords.com). She lives in Los Angeles.
 

2010/2011 Fiction/Nonfiction:

Diana Wagman is a novelist and screenwriter. Her first book, Skin Deep, was heralded by the New York Times as a “brilliant debut.” Her second novel, Spontaneous, won the 2001 PEN Center USA Literary Award for Fiction. Bump, her last novel, was short-listed for the Dublin Literary Prize. Most recently, she has published short stories in Los Angeles Noir, Black Clock, and the premiere issue of Electric Literature alongside Michael Cunningham and Jim Shepard. As a screenwriter, Wagman wrote DELIVERING MILO (2001) starring Albert Finney and Bridget Fonda. Her reviews and essays have appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The LA Weekly, and Poets & Writers. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two children.

 

Mary Otis is an award winning writer whose short story collection Yes, Yes, Cherries was published in 2007 by Tin House Books. She has had stories and essays published in Best New American Voices, Los Angeles Times, Tin House, Berkeley Literary Journal, Alaska Quarterly Review, Cincinnati Review, and Santa Monica Review. Her writing has recently been anthologized in Woof: Fiction Writers on Dogs (Viking) and Tales of Sex and Love (Tin House). Her story "Pilgrim Girl" received an honorable mention for a Pushcart Prize, and her story "Unstruck" was cited in 100 Distinguished Stories in the Best American Short Stories 2006. She is a Walter Dakin Fellow, and in 2009 was invited by the NEA in collaboration with la Fil to attend the Guadalajara Book Festival as a fiction writer. Originally from the Boston area, Mary is a fiction professor in the UC Riverside Low-Residency MFA Program where she is part of the core faculty.

The application period for the next Fiction/Nonfiction cycle is now closed.

2012 Fiction/Nonfiction

Monica Carter, a Milwaukee native, currently resides in Los Angeles and was a 2010 PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Fellow and a 2010 Lambda Literary Foundation Emerging GLBT Voice. Her fiction has appeared in Strange Cargo: An Emerging Voices Anthology, Black Clock, The Rattling Wall, and in the forthcoming issue of Bloom. She is currently working on her novel, The Affair of 1936. She also curates Salonica, a website dedicated to world literature.

 

Shanna Mahin is a high school dropout who rallied late and has become optimistic about a strong finish, due in no small part to a 2008 PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Fellowship, a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, a Norman Mailer Colony Fellowship, and a few summer residencies. She's currently working on completing her memoir, tentatively titled The Concerns of the Bourgeoisie. She asks that you make note of the word “tentatively.”

 

Carl Peel was born in Santa Monica, California, and currently lives in Los Angeles. He received a BA from UCLA in English literature and was a 1999 PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Fellow. His fiction has appeared in BeWhich Magazine, Newport Review, and in the anthologies Wild Things: Domestic and Otherwise and Experienced: Rock Music Tales of Fact & Fiction. He is currently working on a novel, Lions & Ghosts, an early draft of which was shortlisted for the James Jones First Novel Award and was a semifinalist for the Virginia Center for the Book’s Great American Book Award

 

2011 Poetry

We are pleased to introduce the mentors for this year's Emerging Voices fellowship.

Ramona Ausubel’s novel, No One is Here Except All of Us, was published by Riverhead Books in 2012. It was a New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice and was named a Best Book of the Year by the San Francisco Chronicle and the Huffington Post.  Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review Daily, One Story, and The Best American Fantasy and shortlisted in The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Non-Required Reading. Ausubel’s short-story collection, A Guide to Being Born, will be published by Riverhead in 2013.

Meghan Daum has been an opinion columnist at The Los Angeles Times since 2005. She has written for numerous publications, including The New Yorker, Harper's, and Vogue, and is the author of three books, most recently the memoir Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived In That House.

Harryette Mullen is the author of several poetry collections including Recyclopedia, winner of a PEN Beyond Margins Award, and Sleeping with the Dictionary, a finalist for a National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Her poems have been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Polish, German, Swedish, Danish, Turkish, and Bulgarian. She teaches American poetry, African American literature, and creative writing at UCLA. A collection of her essays and interviews, The Cracks Between What We Are and What We Are Supposed to Be, was published by University of Alabama Press in 2012. Her Tanka Diary is forthcoming from Graywolf Press in 2013.

People ineligible for the Emerging Voices program:

• Those who have a B.A. in English with a Creative Writing Emphasis or an M.A., M.F.A., or Ph.D. in Creative Writing.
• Students currently enrolled in undergraduate or graduate degree programs.
• Those who are Professional PEN Center USA members.
• Writers who are widely published or have recent noteworthy writing awards.
• People who have books published and former or current professional magazine/newspaper writers or editors.
• Anyone under the age of 18.

Emerging Voices is a rigorous fellowship program based in Los Angeles with weekly meetings and an intense reading and writing schedule. Participants should be willing and able to make an enthusiastic commitment to the program and to their involvement as members of a group. If you are not a resident of Los Angeles and you are awarded the fellowship you will need to relocate for the eight-month program. Housing is not provided.
If offered a place in the fellowship, you may not defer acceptance for another year. If you are not awarded a fellowship, we encourage you to reapply if interested.

MENTORS: Mentors are carefully chosen from PEN’s membership of professional writers based on shared writing interests with each fellow. The mentor-fellow relationship is expected to challenge the fellow's work and compel significant creative progress. Over the course of the program, EVs and mentors should meet three times in person, and be in contact at least once a month. In these meetings, mentors will offer feedback on the EV fellows’ work in progress.

UCLA EXTENSION WRITERS’ PROGRAM: Participants will attend two free courses at UCLA Extension, donated by the Writers’ Program. Program and PEN staff will assist EV fellows with course selection. Fellows will also have access to the UCLA libraries.

AUTHOR EVENINGS: A schedule of Q & A evenings with prominent authors, poets, editors, agents, and publishers will be distributed at the first EV orientation meeting. Fellows must read each visiting author's book before the evening.

MASTER CLASSES: After completing the UCLA Extension courses, EV fellows will enroll in a PEN master class. The master class is a four-session, genre-specific workshop with a professional writer that affords fellows the opportunity to exchange feedback on their works in progress.

VOLUNTEER PROJECT: All fellows are expected to complete a 25-hour volunteer project that is relevant to the literary community.

VOICE CLASS: The fellowship will provide a one-day workshop with a professional voice actor. The EV fellows will read their work in a recording studio and receive instruction on reading their work publicly.

FINAL READING: The program culminates in a public reading to showcase the progress each fellow has made in his or her work.

SPECIAL EVENTS: PEN Center USA provides complimentary admission to select events throughout the fellowship.

The Emerging Voices Fellowship originated as a mentorship project. The project grew out of PEN Center USA’s forum “Writing the Immigrant Experience,” held at the Los Angeles Central Library in March 1994, which explored the issues and challenges faced by first and second generation immigrant writers. It was evident from the forum that many of the culturally diverse communities of writers in Southern California were often isolated from the literary establishment. In the fall of 1995, PEN Center USA initiated Emerging Voices as a literary mentorship program designed to launch potential professional writers from minority, immigrant and other underrepresented communities. The program has now evolved into an eight-month writing fellowship for writers who lack access to a traditional writing education and seek financial and creative support.

The Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation was established in 1948 by my parents, a young businessman and his fashion-editor wife, who clearly had a great deal of confidence in their eventual financial success as well as a genuine desire to contribute to the world outside themselves. As my father formulated it in the beginning, “Individuals fortunate enough to receive unusual benefits from a society have the distinct obligation to return meaningful, tangible support to that society—in the form of creative energy as well as funding.”

What this has meant over the years is a pattern of rewarding excellence and accomplishment by giving awards in the fields of medicine, art and literature. In the last several decades, as the younger generation has begun to have more of a say, the goal has modulated into an emphasis on more directly encouraging excellence and accomplishment—by funding programs as well as awards, thus concentrating on setting up structures for achievement, and utilizing the multiplier effect.

– Jamie Wolf

The 2014 Emerging Voices application period is now open. You may download the application here.

Do I need to live in the Los Angeles area to apply to the Emerging Voices Fellowship?

You must be a US citizen or have the correct documentation to apply to the EV Fellowship. However, all fellows must live in Los Angeles or close enough to commute to Los Angeles for the duration of the program. No funds are available for relocation.

Are there any age restrictions?

The EV Fellowship is open to all writers over the age of 18.

Can I submit work that has been previously published?

Yes, if you feel it is the work that best represents you as a writer.

Can you help me decide what work to submit as my writing sample?

No, although we do strongly encourage you to submit writing that corresponds to your project proposal. Also, please submit work that corresponds to your genre. This allows the selection committee to gain a better understanding of your project and how you and your work could benefit from the fellowship.

How should the manuscript be formatted?

Fiction and nonfiction manuscripts should be double-spaced, 12-point font, 1-inch margins all around. You may format poetry manuscripts however you feel best represents the poetry you are submitting, as long as you do not exceed the page limit and the typed font is legible. Please number your pages.

What does the selection committee look for in a manuscript?

A strong writing sample. The best advice we can give is to seek the advice of other writers and instructors when preparing your manuscript.

When are applicants notified of the committee's decision?

All applicants will be notified two months after the close of the application period.

Can you give me feedback on my manuscript or tell me why I wasn't selected for the fellowship?

We cannot provide any comments on manuscripts or on applications submitted.

On the short answer section of the Emerging Voices application, it states you may use up to 500 words for each answer. Does this mean 500 words for each answer or 500 words for all nine questions combined?

It states each response can be up to 500 words maximum. That means each response for each individual question may be up to 500 words, not 500 words for all nine responses.

I write screenplays/graphic novels/children's books. Am I eligible?
The accepted genres for the Emerging Voices Fellowship are fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. All classes, mentors, and programming for the fellowship are based on one of these three genres. Many alumni have gone on to pursue careers in graphic novels, performance art, and screenwriting, but concentrated on either prose or poetry for the duration of the fellowship.

PLEASE REMEMBER: No FED EX or UPS packages.

You must use only non-signature mail.
Your manuscript must be double-spaced, with 1-inch margins, 12-point Times New Roman font.
Letters of recommendation must be signed.
SASEs accepted.

You can learn about the 2012 Emerging Voices fellows here, and watch the video of the 2011 Final Reading. The Mark is a rigorous manuscript finishing school for Emerging Voices alumni. Visit the Mark page and The Mark Blog to learn more.