Poetry Coalition Fellowship Program

Kundiman, a founding member of the Poetry Coalition, is accepting applications for a paid Poetry Coalition Fellowship position. This position is 20 hours per week from September 15, 2020 to June 30, 2021. The stipend is $18,720 plus $1,000 toward health care.

The Poetry Coalition Fellowship Program is a three-year pilot program, and Kundiman will host a Fellow for the 2020–2021 year only. The goals of this are to help:

• diversify the leadership of the nonprofit literary field by encouraging more inclusion of individuals from under-represented communities;
develop future literary leaders regardless of educational background;

• introduce individuals who are interested to nonprofit literary arts management, fundraising, programming, and editorial work, providing experiences that will be useful as they seek jobs and inspiring them to consider working in the literary field; and increase the capacity of our individual organizations by having additional assistance.

Paid fellowships will not “level the playing field.” Opportunity in our country is not equally distributed across ability, class, ethnic, gender, and racial lines. And we alone cannot erase and undo the biases, barriers, discrimination, and prejudice that exist in our country. But we hope poetry organizations can be out front in building equity and inclusivity in literary arts organizations and spaces.