Literature (Fiction, Children's Fiction) Fellowship Panel Report

Memorandum

The Literature Fellowship Review Panel for Fiction and Children's Fiction was held on October 14, 2010 to recommend awards to individual artists.

Twenty-eight (28) eligible Literature Fellowship applications in Fiction and Children's Fiction were reviewed by the panel. The panel recommended four (4) Fellowship awards for a total of $10,000.

If additional funds become available, the Division will award the funds to the next applicant on the list.

A complete list of all reviewed applications, final scores, and award recommendations is provided on the following pages.

Panel Meeting Budget:The budget for the Artist Fellowship Program was $50,000. The panel budgets for Music, Theatre, Dance, Literature, Interdisciplinary Arts, and Folk Arts were determined by the number/demand of applications to each discipline.

Panel comment was as follows:
Panelists felt the entire process was professional handled and a fine job was done by everyone. They felt the only issue was the lack of funds. One panelist asked future applicants not to print single spaced or in 10pt font as it makes reading the work samples extraordinarily difficult. Another panelist suggested sponsoring application workshops for applicants to work one on one with a consultant to make their application more competitive.

All panelists requested that we call the $2,500 awards "fellowship awards" rather than honorable mentions.

Public comment was as follows:
Members of the public were in attendance by teleconference. Applicants thanked everyone for their hard work.

Panel Biographies

Jocelyn Bartkevicius

Orange County

Jocelyn Bartkevicius is the editor of The Florida Review and directs the MFA program at the University of Central Florida. Her work has been published in anthologies and such journals as The Hudson Review, The Missouri Review, The Bellingham Review, and Fourth Genre. She has received The Annie Dillard Award in the Essay, The Missouri Review Prize, and the Iowa Woman Essay Award.

Joe David Bellamy

Seminole County

Joe David Bellamy won the Editors' Book Award for his novel Suzi Sinzinnati. He is also the author of fifteen other books, including Atomic Love, Literary Luxuries: American Writing at the End of the Millennium, The New Fiction, and forthcoming, Kindred Spirits: 400 Years of an American Family. He is a voting member of the National Book Critics Circle and served as Director of the Literature Program of the National Endowment for the Arts. His essays, fiction, poetry, and reviews have been published in The Atlantic, The Nation, Harper's, Narrative, Paris Review, Saturday Review, The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post Book World, and some seventy others. He has taught writing at several colleges and universities, including the University of Iowa.

John Dufresne

Broward County

Dufresne is the author of the novels Louisiana Power & Light, Love Warps the Mind a Little, Deep in the Shade of Paradise, and most recently, Requiem, Mass. He's also written two collections of stories, The Way That Water Enters Stone and Johnny Too Bad and two guides to writing fiction, The Lie That Tells a Truth and Is Life Like This? He teaches creative writing at Florida International University in Miami. He received a Florida Individual Artist Fellowship in 2007.

N.M. Kelby

Orange County

N.M. Kelby is the author of a forthcoming novel about the life of Escoffier for W.W. Norton and the craft book The Constant Art of Being a Writer: The Life, the Work & the Business of Fiction (Writer's Digest Books). Novels include the bestselling In the Company of Angels, Murder at the Bad Girl's Bar and Grill, Whale Season and Theater of the Stars. Her story collection A Travel Guide for Restless Hearts was awarded a 2009 Minnesota Book Award and the 2009 Florida Book of the Year gold medal for fiction. Named "Outstanding Southern Artist" by The Southern Arts Federation, Kelby has been translated into several languages and offered by The Literary Guild, Doubleday Book Club, and Quality Paperback Book Club. Two of her novels, Theater of the Stars and Whale Season, have been bought for film and are in production. She is the recipient of numerous grants and awards including a Bush Artist Fellowship in Literature, a National Endowment for the Arts Inter-Arts grant, the Heekin Group Foundation's James Fellowship for the Novel, both a Florida and Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship in fiction, two Jerome Travel Study Grants, and a Jewish Arts Endowment Fellowship.

2011 Literature (Fiction & Children's Fiction) Fellowship Panel Funding Recommendations