This scholarship is designed to encourage the Latinx voice in poetry and the literary arts, both at The Frost Place and in the broader literary community. It covers tuition, room and board, and travel for The Frost Place Conference on Poetry. For the 2020 Conference on Poetry, which will occur online, it will cover tuition and books.
The recipient of the scholarship will be selected from the applicant pool by a small panel of readers committed to the Latinx voice in poetry. The selection will be based solely on the merit of the work submitted and the responses to the application questions.
Applicants should self-identify as Latinx, have a strong commitment to the Latinx community, and be a minimum of 21 years of age.
Former Conference on Poetry attendee and coordinator of the scholarship, Javier Zamora, describes how his time at The Frost Place was important to his development as a poet, and how he hopes this scholarship will affect its recipient and further the Latinx voice in poetry.
“My time at the conference was essential in cementing relationships that helped my writing’s early stages, ie. before the MFA. The workshops were intimate and I learned so much about poetry. […] The craft talks were also helpful in solidifying my ideas for what a “poem” is, and friendships I made with faculty and attendants have proved lasting.
Although the faculty is diverse, while at The Frost Place, I saw a lack of a Latinx presence within the attendants. During my MFA at NYU, Latinx presence was also small. The purpose of this scholarship is to begin to increase our visibility in these spaces. The idea is to create more possibilities for inclusion.”