Poets & Writers’ Board of Directors has established the Poets & Writers COVID-19 Relief Fund to provide emergency assistance to writers experiencing financial need due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The fund will provide grants of $1,000 each to approximately eighty writers in April. As funding allows, a second round of grants may be awarded.

Writers who are listed in the Poets & Writers Directory as of April 10, 2020; who have received a mini-grant through the Poets & Writers Readings & Workshops program; or who have received the organization’s Amy Award, the Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award, the Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award, or the Galen Williams Fellowship are eligible.

Submit an online application, consisting of a brief set of questions about eligibility and financial need, by Sunday, April 19. Visit the website for complete guidelines. Contact relief@pw.org with any questions. The initial cohort of applicants will be notified of the status of their application by the end of April.

Poets & Writers seeded the fund with $50,000 from the organization’s reserves; donors including Zibby Owens and Michael Pietsch have provided additional support. The emergency fund is an extension of an overarching mission to foster the professional development of poets and writers, to promote communication throughout the literary community, and to help create an environment in which literature can be appreciated by the widest possible public.

“Doctor, you say there are no haloes / around the streetlights in Paris / and what I see is an aberration...” In the Paris Review’s “Poets on Couches” video series, Maya C. Popa reads Lisel Mueller’s “Monet Refuses the Operation” and speaks about how the poem brings her comfort. In the poem, Mueller imagines a conversation between a doctor and the painter Monet, who pushes back against having surgery to correct his cataracts, which may just be the source of his artistic vision. Write an essay where you express your unique vision of the world. Was there a moment in your life when you had to fight to be true to yourself?

“The care of a human body ties people to the physical, social world they’ve been abruptly forced to leave behind,” writes Amanda Mull in “Isolation Is Changing How You Look” at the Atlantic. “Stuck inside, people are left with just their existing tools and skills, trying to maintain their sense of self, or at least their eyebrows. With people’s faces, so go their identities.” Consider how this time of quarantine and isolation is affecting our grooming rituals and self-identity, and try writing a short story where your main character makes a change to their physical appearance, either drastic or small, in response to a pivotal moment in their life. Track their thoughts throughout the process including both their physical and internal selfhood.

Earlier this year, the Dutch dance company Nederlands Dans Theater performed at New York City Center as part of their sixtieth season. Included in their program was the U.S. premiere of Walk the Demon, a 2018 piece by Marco Goecke that featured sharp, small, and abrasive movements. Drawing inspiration from this choreographic style, try writing a poem using only single-syllable words to mimic short and sharp actions. What content do you find best fits this stylistic endeavor? See what unfolds from this syllabic limitation.

To help writers impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, we will be highlighting emergency funds available to writers. For more sources of support, read our running list of resources for writers in the time of coronavirus.

On April 2, the American Booksellers Association (ABA) and the Book Industry Charitable Foundation (Binc) announced the Save Indie Bookstores campaign, a fundraising effort that will provide financial relief to independent bookstores impacted by the current public health crisis.

The campaign launched with an initial donation of $500,000 from writer James Patterson and continues to collect donations through the campaign’s website. Funds raised will be granted to independent bookstores to cover operating expenses. The amount of funding awarded per store will be determined by the final amount of money raised and by the number of eligible bookstores that apply for relief.

Independent bookstores with a physical address in the United States or its territories are eligible to apply for funding. Eligible bookstores will also estimate a business loss of at least fifty percent of sales and/or net income during any thirty day period from March 15, 2020, to May 15, 2020, due to the impact of COVID-19. Additionally, they must not have “any other immediate financial resources to draw from,” such as crowd funding in excess of $20,000 or significant cash reserves. To apply, bookstore staff may submit an online application through the campaign’s website by April 27. Visit the website for more information.

Since its inception, Save Indie Bookstores has raised more than $64,000 in addition to the initial $500,000 it received from author Patterson. “In these uncertain times, it’s up to all of us to do our part and to help those in need however we can,” Patterson said of the effort. “The White House is concerned about saving the airline industry and big businesses—I get that. But I’m concerned about the survival of independent bookstores, which are at the heart of main streets across the country.”

Submissions are open for the 2020 Catamaran Poetry Prize. Sponsored by the literary nonprofit Catamaran, whose mission is “to capture the vibrant and creative West Coast spirit,” the annual award is given for a poetry manuscript written by a poet living in California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, or Hawaii. The winning poet will receive $1,000 and their manuscript will be published by Catamaran.

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Using only the online submission system, submit a poetry collection of 60 to 100 pages with a $35 entry fee by April 20. Poet, playwright, and translator Zack Rogow will judge. Visit the website for complete guidelines.

Finalists for the 2020 poetry prize will be announced on June 1. The winner will be announced by June 30, and their collection is expected to be published in November of this year. A book launch and reading, featuring the winner and finalists, will take place in the fall. Previous winners of the award are poets Susan Browne and Michelle Bitting.

Happiness, sadness, anger, disgust, fear, and surprise have been named by twentieth-century psychologists as our basic human emotions, but what about other types of feelings? In her first essay collection, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning, published in February by One World, Cathy Park Hong writes that “minor feelings occur when American optimism is enforced upon you, which contradicts your own racialized reality, thereby creating a static of cognitive dissonance.” Hong writes that minor feelings are related to cultural theorist Sianne Ngai’s idea of ugly feelings, which are “non-cathartic states of emotion.” Think about a time when you have felt cognitive dissonance with the state of current events or between your personal reality and how the larger world perceives you. Write a personal essay that explores the experience of minor feelings, such as boredom or irritation or envy, that lead to no cathartic outlet or breakthrough. What do you find when you trace these feelings to larger sociocultural or historical forces?