Invest in the Next Generation of Artists and Writers

Attempt everything. That’s the advice Elizabeth McCracken, PEN/Malamud Award winner, National Book Award finalist, and past FAWC Fellow, gives to writers. “Ambition,” she says, “is merely the willingness to make mistakes.”

It sounds simple, but many artists rarely get the chance. Rent, day jobs, and deadlines leave little room to try something that might not work. That’s why, every October, 20 emerging artists and writers arrive in Provincetown for something increasingly rare: seven months of time, space, and freedom to experiment, rest, take risks, let go, and begin again.

McCracken remembers the freedom to experiment as one of the great gifts of her time here as a Fellow: “I am forever grateful to FAWC for giving me time and space to make some of the most significant blunders of my writing life.”

You can see that freedom in the work Fellows make. Dominique Muñoz’s Dream Vessel #2 rises from knotted bands of indigo cloth and bright cord, a vessel built by hand, strand by strand, with no blueprint. Oscar Morel’s 3rd of Brewster captures the view from his home for seven months: the studio apartment on the third floor of our Brewster Street building, with Provincetown’s rooftops and the bay beyond, built up in layered, hand-cut relief. The home you helped give him, in his hands, became art.