Calling All Writers With Disabilities: Apply For a Grant Today!

An image of a laptop and notebook on a wooden deskDiversity has become a buzz word the past decade or so — a good thing, really — but when it’s talked about, the conversation tends to leave disability at the wayside. Conversation about diversity is often limited to ethnicity, race, religion and sexuality.

Not at the Mendocino County Writers Conference in California, though. Every year the MCWC awards a Voices of Diversity grant to a writer from an underrepresented group “on the basis of age, ethnicity, and sexual identity, and disability, social or cultural background.”

You read that right: the Voices of Diversity grant can be awarded to someone with a disability, and I can tell you firsthand that it’s a thrill to attend the conference – I was awarded the grant last year.

The Mendocino County Writers Conference is offering the Voices of Diversity grant again this year, and if you’d like to apply, you need to act fast: applications are due by Friday, February 15, 2019. To apply for a scholarship:

  • Fully download, complete, and sign the scholarship application form
  • Submit a digital signature, or print out the form and sign it by hand
  • Email it with your writing sample to scholarships@mcwc.org

Being around people from different backgrounds exposes us all to new viewpoints and perspectives, and in the case of a conference for writers, being around people with different sorts of identities impacts how you see the world and what stories you are able to tell. It’s important for fiction writers, non-fiction writers, poets, playwrights and script writers to tell everyone’s story, and I commend the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference for recognizing that disability needs to be a part of this larger fabric of stories, too.

Now get those applications in — full instructions for manuscript preparation are provided on the application form itself, and they’re .


 

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  1. Robert Silverstein Says:

    Do you offer financial assistance to get a childrens book published.. My daughter is handicapped and was a poster child for easter seals about 34 years ago.. She has written a childrens story about my farm of alpacas. We dont have enough finances to get illustrations done and the book distributed or published. We could use Amazon for example. She needs something positive in her life as she is 40 years old and needs confidence in herself. She has an awful amount of good she can do for others and I hope there is some suggestion.


  2. Robert Silverstein Says:

    Do you offer financial assistance to get a childrens book published.. My daughter is handicapped and was a poster child for easter seals about 34 years ago.. She has written a childrens story about my farm of alpacas. We dont have enough to get illustrations done and the book distributed or published. We could use Amazon for example. She needs something positive in her life as she is 40 years old and needs confidence in herself. She has an awful amount of good she can do for others and I hope there is some suggestion.


  3. Elisabeth Bertolucci Says:

    Oh, my gosh–so sorry! Typo–my fingers don’t work well anymore. “Ate” should be “Are”, obviously!


  4. Elisabeth Bertolucci Says:

    Hello!
    Ate you offering a Writers Grant for People With Disabilities this year? I sure would appreciate it. Thank you so much!
    Truly, Elisabeth