2024 Fellowship information
The Otherwise Motherboard is now soliciting applications for two 2024 Otherwise Fellows! The Otherwise Fellowship (formerly Tiptree Fellowship) was established in 2015 to support and recognize new voices who are creating work that is changing our view of gender today. The Fellowship program seeks out creators who are striving to complete new works, particularly creators from communities that have been historically underrepresented in the science fiction and fantasy genre and those who are working in media other than traditional fiction! Each Fellow receives USD $500 in support of a new or ongoing project.
Applications are due December 15, 2024, at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time, via email. Selected Fellows will be announced in Spring 2025. The Fellowship committee is being chaired by Otherwise Motherboard member Jed Samer.
Who can apply
Otherwise Fellows can be writers, artists, scholars, media makers, remix artists, performers, musicians, or something else entirely. If you are doing work that is changing the way we think about gender through speculative narrative—maybe in a form we would recognize as the science fiction or fantasy genre, maybe in some other way—you are eligible for a Fellowship. You don’t have to be a professional or have an institutional affiliation. We want to support emerging creators who don’t already have institutional support for their work.
People of all genders are eligible. Also, you do not have to be a US resident! People all over the world are eligible, with the exception of people in countries the US has embargoed (because then we can’t send you the money).
What we ask of Fellows
We ask two things of Otherwise Fellowship recipients: to write a short report telling the Otherwise community about their work (see past reports), and to participate in the selection process for choosing the next year’s Fellows.
How to apply
To apply for an Otherwise Fellowship, submit two statements of 1-2 pages each, along with a brief example of your work. At the moment, regrettably, we only have the resources to consider English-language applications.
Statement 1 should answer this question: How are you working with speculative narrative to expand or explore our understanding of gender?
Here we want you to tell us why your work is groundbreaking in the ways that the Otherwise Award honors: what’s speculative about it, and how you engage the complexities, intersections, and possibilities of gender in real and imagined worlds. Use this statement to tell us why we should be excited about supporting your work.
We are open to broad understandings of “gender” and are especially interested in its intersections with race, nationality, class, disability, sexuality, and other categories of identification and structures of power.
Statement 2 should answer this question: What will you use the fellowship for?
Here we want to know why the monetary grant will be important for the particular project you plan to use it to help realize. Maybe it will go toward materials, travel for research, or the cost of presenting your work at a conference or exhibition. Maybe it will buy you time away from a job or other responsibilities so that you have time to focus on your creative work. We realize that $500 is a drop in the ocean for some kinds of projects, like films; maybe you will be using your fellowship as seed money, to help build up a larger sum you need to raise.
This is also where you can tell us more about who you are—how this project fits into your overall trajectory, what challenges it might help you overcome, and what it would mean to you to be named a Otherwise Fellow.
The third requirement is an example of your work.
This can take any form you like: a link to something online, a copy of a published or unpublished story or piece of writing, a set of images that tell a story, a video, or something else. If you are applying for an Otherwise Fellowship to work on a larger project in progress, you may wish to share pieces that you have already completed. Please send no more than 1,500 words of writing, five minutes of video, or an approximate equivalent length in other media.
To apply, email these three things (please save your statements as a single file in Word, .rtf, or .pdf format) to fellowships@otherwiseaward.org.