The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts is pleased to announce that New Mexico-based writer Jenn Shapland has been named the 2024 recipient of VCCA’s Steven Petrow and Julie Petrow-Cohen LGBTQ+ Fellowship.
This esteemed fellowship recognizes and supports outstanding LGBTQ+ writers, providing them with time and space to pursue their creative projects within the supportive community of VCCA’s renowned artist residency program at Mt. San Angelo in Amherst, Va.
Shapland plans to spend her December residency at Mt. San Angelo—her first time as a VCCA Fellow—researching and developing a nonfiction book, Bear Country, while also exploring her first foray into fiction writing with The Crab Apples, a novel.
Shapland says of the projects, “I’ll oscillate between two linked inquiries: a nonfiction response to my mother’s sudden death in 2021 and a novel about a lesbian artist who goes missing. The two illuminate each other around the themes of ancestry, queer identity, and vanishing. Both weave research with my experience, and I think of them as a diptych.”
Steven Petrow added, “Jenn perfectly exemplifies what the jurors are seeking when choosing finalists for the award. I’m thrilled that this will be Jenn’s first time in residence at VCCA.”
Jenn Shapland’s first book, My Autobiography of Carson McCullers, was a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award and the Southern Book Prize, and won the 2021 Lambda Literary Award, the Publishing Triangle Judy Grahn Award, and the Phi Beta Kappa Christian Gauss Award. Her most recent book, Thin Skin, was a Time, Publishers Weekly, and New York Public Library best book of 2023.
Shapland’s essays have appeared in New England Review, the New York Times, Guernica, and Tin House, and have been awarded a Pushcart Prize and the Rabkin Foundation Award. She has a PhD in English from the University of Texas at Austin and she works as an archivist for a visual artist.
Pictured above: Jenn Shapland; Photo credit: Brad Trone 2022
Steven Petrow and Julie Petrow-Cohen LGBTQ+ Fellowship
Steven Petrow and his late sister, Julie Petrow-Cohen, grew up in Forest Hills, New York, coming out to each other in their teens. Steven is an award-winning journalist and book author who is best known for his Washington Post and New York Times essays on aging, health, and civility. He’s the author of multiple books, including Stupid Things I Won’t Do When I Get Old and the forthcoming new work, The Joy You Make. He is the 2024 N.C. Piedmont Laureate.
Julie graduated from New York University and New York Law School, where she was on Law Review. She started her career as a litigator, moving on to a long and rewarding career in the securities industry. Julie used her knowledge of the law as a fierce advocate for women’s and LGBTQ+ rights. She volunteered in the legal clinic of New York’s LGBT Center, as a legal advocate for homeless people in New York City, and was highly involved in the fight for marriage equality. Julie, 61, died from metastatic ovarian cancer in June 2023 and was the wife of Maddy Petrow-Cohen and mother to two daughters, Jessie and Caroline.
Established in 2016 and first awarded in 2017, the Steven Petrow and Julie Petrow-Cohen LGBTQ+ Fellowship (renamed in 2023) is open to writers in any genre who self-identify as LGBTQ+. This juried fellowship is awarded on a competitive basis, and the selection is made based on the quality of the submitted work. The Petrow Family Fellowship provides a fully-funded, two-week residency at Mt. San Angelo, which includes a private bedroom with private bath, a separate individual studio, and three meals a day in a community of cross-disciplinary artists.
The fellowship is awarded annually and will next be available for VCCA’s Fall 2025 residency season at Mt. San Angelo. Online applications open October 1, 2024, with a deadline of January 15, 2025.
Pictured above: Julie Petrow-Cohen and Steven Petrow; Photo credit: Frankie Alduino