Givers Fund Grants are intended to aid projects that align with SFWA’s mission to promote, advance, and support science fiction and fantasy writing around the world. This fund is made possible with the generosity of donors from our community and partnerships within the publishing landscape. We’d like to thank all of our donors who help make this program a reality. If you’d like to donate to this endeavor or another SFWA charitable fund, please do so at www.sfwa.org/donate.

The recipients of the 2023 SFWA Givers Fund Grants are as follows:

• All Types of Media Arts Convention (ATOMACON), for a convention
• Alpha Workshop for Young Writers Inc., for a workshop
• Arisia, Inc., for a convention
• Association of Nigerian Authors, for a youth workshop
• Baja Arizona Science Fiction Association for TusCon, a convention
• Black Science Fiction Society, for an online community
• Bubonicon Inc., for a convention
• Cal State Fullerton Library Archives & Special Collections, for a state college library
• Carl Brandon Society, for free books at a juvenile book fair
• Cascade Writers, for a workshop
• Clarion West, for a workshop
• Daniel Marcus, for Story Hour, an online reading series
• Dream Foundry, for an online community
• If This Goes On (Don’t Panic), for a podcast
• L.O.K.I.e.V. zur Forderung der Phantastik, for a convention
• Multiverse Events LLC, for a convention
• Narrate Conferences for Sirens Conference, a convention
• Odyssey Charitable Trust, for a workshop
• Red Ogre Review, for a small press
• Sheridan High School Oregon, for a public school library
• Society for the Furtherance & Study of Fantasy & Science Fiction, for WisCon, a convention
• Space Cowboy Books, for a podcast
• Speculative Literature Foundation,  for the Portolan Project, an open-source creative writing and literature resource
• The Clarion Foundation, for the Clarion San Diego workshop
• The DC Center for the LGBT Community, for a convention
• Trustees of Dartmouth College, for the Dartmouth Speculative Fiction Project
• University of Kansas Center for Research, for the Ad Astra Institute for Science Fiction & the Speculative Imagination, for a workshop
• University City Public Library, for a public library
• University of Wyoming, for LaunchPad, a workshop

Lou Berger, chair of the SFWA Grants Committee, said, “The Committee was pleased to receive so many grant requests for 2023 projects and programs. Special thanks to Jessica Reisman and Nancy Shrock for serving on the volunteer committee with me, and thanks to the always amazing Oz Drummond and Erin Hartshorn, SFWA’s comptroller and chief financial officer, respectively, for their Herculean efforts to give the Committee the insights they needed to most efficiently distribute the monies.”

Many of the 2023 grant recipients have already put their 2023 grants to good use. Sharang Biswas, co-organizer and co-editor of the Dartmouth Speculative Fiction Project, remarked, “Our team is delighted and grateful to SFWA for helping our vision—to bring together writers and multidisciplinary professors to imagine humanity’s future through fiction—to fruition. We geared up in April at the Dartmouth campus to welcome a phenomenal group of authors to spend a weekend exploring their partner professors’ research and employ design methodologies to brainstorm short-story ideas.”

Clarion West recently released a new report on their Evolving Workshop Culture Project. Jae Steinbacher, Clarion West Residential Workshop Coordinator, said, “SFWA’s Giver Fund Grants have helped provide scholarships to students of Clarion West’s Six-Week Workshop. These days, as our classes are more international and writers from all walks of life are able to attend, more students than ever are seeking scholarship support. As part of our commitment to providing a world-class, inclusive workshop experience, we’ve undergone a process of studying and reworking our curriculum. We are happy to share the full review of our workshop critique methods, the alternate methods we reviewed, how we assessed them, and our conclusions.” The report can be read here.

Chris McKitterick, director of the Ad Astra Institute for Science Fiction & the Speculative Imagination that has become a not-for-profit independent of the University of Kansas, shared, “We are thrilled and honored to receive a Givers Fund Grant from SFWA to be able to offer scholarships for our ‘Science into Fiction’ and residential summer speculative-fiction writing workshops for writers who might otherwise not be able to attend such educational opportunities. Associate Director Kij Johnson and I just recently launched the Ad Astra Institute to host both new and long-running workshops and masterclasses, so receiving this grant is so helpful in reaching out to under-served writers.”

Please join us in congratulating all the 2023 Givers Fund Grant recipients, and in supporting the projects they are undertaking to elevate the speculative fiction genres and their writers. Applications are always open for Givers Fund Grants, and previous recipients are welcome to reapply. The deadline to apply for our 2024 awards is October 1, 2023.

To learn more about all of SFWA’s benevolent funds, head here.