Recommender Grants for Writers

Purpose

Deadline date(s)

This program runs from September 3, 2024 to January 15, 2025, 1:00 p.m. ET. OAC does not set deadlines in this program. Recommenders set their own schedules for review of applications.

Grant amount(s)

Applicants may:

• apply to up to ten recommenders per program year (September 2024 – January 2025); applications may be for the same project or for different projects
• only submit one application per recommender per program year
• be recommended for funding by more than one recommender per program year

Important:

Due to the number of applications received and the limited funds available, grants awarded may be smaller than the amount requested.

If you are awarded more than one grant in a single third-party recommender program year, these grants will count as one grant toward your three-grant limit for 2024. The recommender programs are: Indigenous Visual Artists’ Materials, Exhibition Assistance, Recommender Grants for Theatre Creators and Recommender Grants for Writers.

Recent changes

• The application questions have been reworked to better align with OAC’s current strategic plan.

Eligible applicants

You must be an Ontario resident and have a recent professional publishing history with, at least:

• one traditionally published book (minimum of 48 pages) for which you have a publishing contract and receive royalties; or
• three traditionally published short stories, comics, poems or other works for which you have received payment. Works can appear in magazines, newspapers, websites, and anthologies. Contest-winning work is considered publication; or
• three years' professional presentation of comics work through work-for-hire creation jobs (editorial cartooning, creation for commercial comics franchises), sales at curated comics festivals, or gallery exhibitions; or
• two recent production writing credits for non-text media (radio, television, film, interactive digital media, and theatre).

Read the Guide to OAC Project Programs for more eligibility information.

Ineligible applicants

• organizations
• ad-hoc groups and collectives
• non-professional applicants
• applicants with a conflict of interest with a specific recommender may not apply to that recommender. See Conflict of interest section below for details.

The following may not be used to establish eligibility:

• student or academic publications, including scholarly monographs and articles published in peer-reviewed academic journals
• self-published work
• work that you have done as part of your employment unless you are a professional journalist or a professional writer of narrative content or visual artist/illustrator for the comics, film, television, or interactive digital media sectors

What this program funds

Grants through this program fund the time and activities needed to begin new work or continue work in progress for the project(s) described in your application.

Eligible projects may vary in scale from chapbook-length poetry projects and feature magazine articles to full-length books. See the full list of Eligible genres, below.

Eligible expenses:

• artist fees – payment to yourself for your time in working on this project. The program does not fund living and personal expenses – do not include these as the rationale for the calculation of artist fees.
• research expenses, including travel and accommodation undertaken in the course of research, purchase of resources, or fees paid to an assistant to undertake research on your behalf

Important: Artist fees funded through this program must not be construed as a fee paid by a publisher to an artist for any reason.

What this program does not fund

• writing for film, radio, television, theatre or interactive digital media
• manuscript evaluation
• editorial services
• publication expenses
• expenses incurred after the publication of a completed work
• works in languages other than English
  • projects in French are funded by the Littérature – projets francophones program
  • works in Indigenous languages are funded by Indigenous Arts Projects
• works in other Ineligible genres, as listed below

Activity timing

The activities for which you are requesting funding:

• cannot finish before you receive your grant results, which may be sent up to six weeks after the program’s closing date
• must be completed no more than two years after you receive the grant results. You may continue to work on your funded manuscript after this date, but your grant must be fully spent by this time

Final report requirements

If you receive a grant, you must complete the project and submit a final report in Nova. See Terms and Conditions – receipt of OAC project grant funds for more information on reporting obligations.

In your final report, you will need to provide:

• a description of the project undertaken and its outcomes, including details on any approved or minor changes to what had been outlined in the application
• written, audio, video samples of the work created (optional)
• documentation and/or an explanation of how you followed or will follow OAC’s Recognition Requirements for Project Grant Recipients
  • This could include social media screenshots or a description of how you recognized OAC or plan to do so in future activities or materials tied to the project.

To apply

• Complete and submit an application in Nova.
• Before applying, you must create or update your profile in Nova.

Your application will include:

• basic information about your project
• your answers to application questions
• name of recommender you are applying to
• artistic examples – up to 10 pages of your recent literary work, preferably including an excerpt from the work for which you are seeking support
• support documents: a résumé of up to three pages summarizing your published and/or performed literary work. You may also note key works in other areas of your artistic practice

Complete instructions and requirements are in the application in Nova.

For details on creating a profile or submitting an application in Nova, see the Nova User Guide.

Recommender Deadlines and Contacts