Fellowship
The Fellows
Science and religion, despite their rich, interwoven history, are too often portrayed as opposites in nearly every way, irreconcilable by definition. Indeed, our increasingly polarized societies seem to encourage the proposition that these two ways of knowing the world cannot productively co-exist, that they encounter each other through conflict and contradiction.
The Fellowship
We awarded fifteen $10,000 two-year Think Write Publish Science & Religion Fellowships. Winners were announced August 15, 2016. Fellows participate in three intensive workshops focused on developing, writing, marketing, and publishing their creative nonfiction stories about harmonies between science and religion. Fellows’ work is mentored throughout by experienced writers, editors and teachers and will be featured in a series of regional and national events.
Why Fellows Applied to Think Write Publish?
Recipients of the Think Write Publish Fellowship are developing and writing a true story or a series of true stories exploring the harmonies between science and religion. The Fellowship program not only gives Fellows the time and opportunity to craft a publishable story, but provides them with essential professional guidance and a community of Fellow writers and influential members of the publishing world.
Additional Fellowship Information
- The Fellowship will run from September 2016 through August 2018.
- All Fellows’ domestic (U.S.) travel and accommodation expenses related to their participation is covered by the project, plus a $10,000 honorarium.
The fifteen selected Fellows are participating in a series of three intensive workshops devoted to the craft of writing narrative nonfiction as well as to the skills of publishing narratives in outlets that reach a broad general readership. Workshops take place over a long weekends in October 2016, February 2017, and May 2017. To make the burden of travel more equitable for Fellows, workshops are held in three different locations: Washington, DC; Tempe, AZ; and Pittsburgh, PA. Each Fellow is assigned a mentor who works with them throughout the development of their story. Fellows are required to attend at least one national or regional event and to participate and or contribute to an online course focusing on their work.
Proposals for personal stories were welcome–from scientists, religious figures, or (just as importantly) everyday people seeking to explore or reconcile their own spiritual and scientific beliefs. But so were research-based narratives about historical moments in scientific and religious discovery, or contemporary scientists wrestling with the ethical quandaries their work entails, or religious, legal, humanistic, or other experts who have encountered interesting and revealing instances of science-religion dialogue and harmonies. Above all, we were looking for narratives—true stories, rich with scene, character, and detail—that provide a nuanced, thoughtful consideration of the complex interplay and unexplored interdependencies and synergies between science and religion.
Our interests are broad and inclusive, and we sought narratives that focused strongly on science and religion; we discouraged submissions that focused on secondary issues such as environmentalism, bioethics, and pseudoscience.
This Fellowship is part of the project True Stories Well Told: Using Narrative to Search for Harmonies Between Science and Religion, and is made possible through a grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Arizona State University.
Project leaders: Lee Gutkind and Daniel Sarewitz.