Jennifer Egan Creative Approaches to Mental Health Fellowship

A generous donor created this fellowship in Jennifer Egan’s honor. Jennifer has chosen to direct the fellowship toward supporting writers in any genre whose work meaningfully addresses the struggles of the mentally ill.

A journalist as well as a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, Jennifer has written for the New York Times Magazine about self-injury, opioid addiction, and bipolar diagnosis in children.  Her commitment to writing about mental health is inspired partly by her younger brother, Graham Kimpton, who grappled with schizophrenia throughout his adulthood and ended his life in 2016. Graham was a brave and remarkable human being, and bracingly articulate about his interior life. Despite the many people who adored him, he felt deeply alone with his illness.

Jennifer seeks to encourage writing that advances our empathy for people like Graham.  The better we understand what mental illness feels like—and appreciate the often slight degrees of difference between “ill” and “healthy” consciousness—the better able we’ll be to nurture and care for those whose perceptions refuse to align with the mainstream.

If you would like to apply for the Jennifer Egan Creative Approaches to Mental Health Fellowship, please email Eirinie Carson at [email protected] and request a fee waiver. All applicants for this fellowship may request a waiver.