Making money moves!
I mentioned in my last blog that I’ve been making some major moves with my creative career. Now I have a moment to breathe and write about the biggest of these moves.
First, in February I was awarded a state arts board grant. Here’s all the official language that I have to include with anything I do pertaining the grant:
Stephani Maari Booker is a fiscal year 2024 recipient of a Creative Individuals grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature; and by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
The grant was awarded for my project “Strange Inequalities: BIPOC & Working Classes vs. Near-Future Automated Oppression.” Along with writing three more stories in my series of near-future invasive technological oppression (see “Adjudicated” and “Judie Junkie Blues”), I will be holding two readings at two North Minneapolis venues with six other creative people who will also present their own work based on this theme. Because I didn’t pay myself when I wrote the budget for the grant (I don’t have children who need care or a full-time job to quit or reduce hours for, so I couldn’t justify it), I have to spend all the funds I was awarded on this project.
However, this past week, I was chosen to receive another award: a 2024 McKnight Fellowship for Writers Administered by the Loft Literary Center! The fellowship was awarded based on a sample of poetry I submitted, and I am one of four fellows chosen by judge Mahogany L. Browne to receive an unrestricted cash award. This is the biggest award—the biggest WIN—of my career and my life!
I have to admit, when I would see local creative peers of mine—friends and acquaintances who I’ve known for years—getting grants, awards and fellowships and announcing them on social media, yeah, I’d be hatin’! I’d been busting my butt for as long as they have, we’re all about the same age group (Gen X’ers), and they’re getting all these awards and accolades, and I ain’t been gettin’ nothin’!
Now, I have two of the biggest monetary awards for individual creative people in Minnesota under my belt, all of the sudden, in one year!
On one hand, yes I did the work that prepared me to receive these awards: I wrote my butt off, made dozens of submissions to journals and anthologies until I acquired a long publication record (required to qualify for a lot of grants and awards), plus participated in some continuing education on writing (specifically in poetry) that took my work to the next level creatively.
On the other hand, I’ll never forget a tweet by N. K. Jemisin in which she described scoring the six-figure book deal that got her out of student-loan debt as “the equivalent of winning the lottery.” I’ve submitted applications to the McKnight Fellowship, the state arts board and many other grant and fellowship programs many times. Like Jemisin, I may have worked hard, learned a lot and submitted worthy work. In the end, though, getting the awards, getting the money, getting attention involves a heck of a lot of LUCK. For those of you who are still trying to score that publication deal, that grant, that award, that whatever, just keep creating, keep submitting, keep learning, and keep your fingers crossed.
