Pen Parentis, a young, New York City–based organization whose mission is to provide resources to writers who have children, is offering its first contest for a writing fellowship. The organization will award an emerging fiction writer one thousand dollars and promote his or her work on the Pen Parentis Web site.
The winner will give a reading in New York City at the September 14 gathering of the organization's free monthly reading series featuring writer parents. Novelist—and mother—Jennifer Egan is scheduled to read alongside the inaugural fellow. Egan is the author of the story collection Emerald City (Nan A. Talese, 1996) and four novels including The Keep (Knopf, 2006) and A Visit from the Goon Squad, forthcoming from Knopf in June.
Fiction writers with at least one child under the age of ten are invited to submit unpublished works of short fiction from today until April 17. Each submission must total no more than twelve hundred words and should be accompanied by a fifteen-dollar entry fee.
There is no residency requirement for entrants, but the winner must be able to provide his or her own travel to and accommodations in New York City to be present for the reading in September. More information about the award is available on the Pen Parentis Web site.