Poet Jada Renée Allen has been named the 2026 Rona Jaffe Foundation Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center
In honor of celebrated author Rona Jaffe, poet Jada Renée Allen has been named the 2026 Rona Jaffe Foundation Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center. Through this Fellowship, Allen was awarded a seven-month residency in Provincetown to focus on her creative practice. Her residency included an apartment and stipend support totaling $10,750, as well as a $2,500 prize from the Foundation to help defray the cost of travel and living expenses.
The Rona Jaffe Foundation Fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center, established in 2022, is awarded each year to an emerging woman writer of exceptional promise. During the residency, the Rona Jaffe Foundation Fellow has the opportunity to pursue her work independently while being part of a diverse and supportive community of peers. The Rona Jaffe Foundation Fellowship fully funds the seven-month residency. Previous recipients include Hannah Perrin King (2023), Grace Chao (2024), and Sara Martin (2025).
Allen was selected in April 2025 from an international pool of more than 650 applicants to the Fine Arts Work Center’s Writing Fellowship program. The selection process was led by an esteemed panel of writers and literary leaders, including poet Mark Wunderlich, Executive Director of the Bennington Writing Seminars; Rebecca Gayle Howell, United States Artists Fellow; Frances Hwang, recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction; and National Book Award-winning novelist Jaimy Gordon.
A 2025 Poetry Foundation Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellow and 2022 92Y Discovery Poetry Contest winner, Allen is the recipient of fellowships, scholarships, and support from Tin House, the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, Community of Writers, & VONA (Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation), among other organizations. Her work either appears or is forthcoming in the Academy of American Poets’ “Poem-a-Day,” Gulf Coast Journal, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Wildness, & elsewhere. She is the Founder and Executive Director of The Frances Thompson Writers Studio for Black Trans Study, and Editor-in-Chief of Bodemé Journal.
The Rona Jaffe Foundation is very pleased to be able to support the Fine Arts Work Center and its long history of supporting writers and artists in underwriting an annual 7-month residency for a deserving and talented emerging woman writer,” said Beth McCabe, Executive Director of the Foundation. “This partnership allows us to continue to provide support and opportunities for emerging women writers as well as recognize the important work the Fine Arts Work Center fulfills in the creative sphere, both as a sanctuary and an incubator, for so many writers and artists whose early careers have been nurtured and developed during this formative residency experience.”
“The Rona Jaffe Foundation Fellowship provides women writers with meaningful support as they develop their voices and advance their creative practices,” said Sharon Polli, Executive Director of the Fine Arts Work Center. “Jada Renée Allen is a writer of remarkable intelligence, imagination, and vision, and we are honored to celebrate Jada’s accomplishments during her residency in Provincetown. Her work embodies the curiosity, rigor, and creative ambition that have long defined the Fellowship program.”
The Fine Arts Work Center is an artist-led organization based in Provincetown and connected to the world. The Work Center is internationally known for an acclaimed seven-month residency program granting fellowships to 20 emerging writers and artists each year. Past Writing Fellows have included recent U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón, Pulitzer Prize-winners Marie Howe, Jayne Anne Phillips, and Brandon Som, and National Book Award recipient Susan Choi.
About The Rona Jaffe Foundation
The Rona Jaffe Foundation’s programs of support for emerging women writers identify and encourage women writers of exceptional promise in recognition of the important contributions they make to our culture. Its work acknowledges the difficulties some of the most talented among them have in overcoming obstacles in finding time to write and gaining attention. For over 30 years, through the Writers’ Awards program (1995-2020), sponsored fellowships held at distinguished cultural and educational nonprofit institutions throughout the country, and the support of vital literary nonprofits, The Rona Jaffe Foundation has helped many women build successful writing lives by offering opportunities, encouragement, and financial support at a critical time. www.ronajaffefoundation.org
About the Fine Arts Work Center
The Fine Arts Work Center is a leading artist-led residency for emerging artists and writers and one of the nation’s longest-running and most respected programs of its kind. The Work Center is internationally known for its acclaimed Fellowship program, which provides seven-month residencies to 20 emerging artists and writers, as well as the open-enrollment Summer Workshop Program, its online writing program, FAWC Online, and an extensive series of year-round cultural events and exhibitions.
Since our founding in 1968, the Work Center has hosted more than 1,100 Fellows. Each year, nearly 1,500 artists and writers from around the world apply for 20 Fellowship residencies. Fine Arts Work Center Fellows, who arrive in Provincetown as emerging artists and writers, have gone on to receive Pulitzer Prizes, National Book Awards, MacArthur Fellowships, Guggenheim Fellowships, and the Nobel Prize in Literature, and have presented work at the Venice Biennale, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and venues around the world. The Fine Arts Work Center supports artistic freedom, nurtures creative connections, and makes possible artistic achievements important to the larger culture.
