Announcing Awards in Drawing & Printmaking, Poetry, and Traditional Arts

Mass Cultural Council is proud to announce the 2020 Artist Fellowship awards in Drawing & Printmaking, Poetry, and Traditional Arts. The awards include 19 fellowships of $15,000, and 16 finalist awards of $1,500. See a list of this year’s fellows and finalists, to date.

The awards are anonymously judged, based solely on the artistic quality and creative ability of the work submitted.* Applications were open to all eligible Massachusetts artists. A total number of 632 applications were received: 363 in Drawing & Printmaking, 243 in Poetry, and 26 in Traditional Arts.

The Drawing & Printmaking panelists were Patrick Casey, Rosario Guiraldes, Jesse Kahn, Corinne Rhodes, and Lauren Szumita. The Poetry panelists were Jennifer Barber, Joan Naviyuk Kane, Porsha Olayiwola, and Aaron Smith. Scott Challener, Amy Dryansky, Kirun Kapur, January Gill O’Neil, Metta Sáma, and Elizabeth Witte served as first-round readers. The Traditional Arts panelists were Marie Abe, Kathleen Mundell, Mildred L Rahn, and Warren R. Senders.

This is the first series of Artist Fellowships awards Mass Cultural Council will announce in 2020. In May 2020, Mass Cultural Council will announce awards in Choreography, Fiction/Creative Nonfiction, and Painting.

Find a full list of this year’s Artist Fellowships awardees.

*The exception is Traditional Arts. In that category, the review is not anonymous and there are additional criteria.

Images: Saira Wasim (Drawing & Printmaking Fellow ’20), SILENT PLEA (2018), Gouache on wasli paper, 28.5x26x2 in; Vasileios Kostas (Traditional Arts Fellow ’20) performing; Johnetta Tinker (Drawing & Printmaking Fellow ’20), FROM THY ANCESTORS (2017), Monoprint Collage on Paper, 20.5×16.5×5 in; (left) cover art for THE BOY IN THE LABYRINTH (Univ of Akron Press 2019) by (right) Oliver de la Paz (Poetry Fellow ’20); Roya Amigh (Drawing & Printmaking Fellow ’20), detail of BACK AND FORTH (2016), thread, pieces of cloth and paper, 62×49 in.