Poet Sara Martin has been named the 2025 Rona Jaffe Foundation Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center

The Fine Arts Work Center is proud to announce the next recipient of the Rona Jaffe Fellowship. In honor of celebrated author Rona Jaffe, poet Sara Martin has been named the 2025 Rona Jaffe Foundation Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center.

Through this Fellowship, Martin has been awarded a seven-month residency in Provincetown to focus on her creative practice. Her residency included an apartment and monthly stipends totaling $9,750, as well as a $2,500 prize to help defray the cost of travel and living expenses. 

The Rona Jaffe Foundation Fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center was established in 2022. It 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 in a diverse and supportive community of peers. The Fellowship fully funds the seven-month residency and includes the $2,500 prize. Hannah Perrin King was the inaugural RJF Fellow in 2023, and Grace Chao was the recipient of the award in 2024.

Commenting on her Fellowship experience, Martin reflects:

“I read to fall in love now. I write to fall in love. I lead with love when it comes to my friends, colleagues, neighbors, and family. This fellowship, this time to work, and the people I lived with made me want to love the world. I understand now that the way that I show love for the world is through writing and attention.” 

“Support from the Rona Jaffe Foundation and the Fine Arts Work Center helped me understand that I had not been nurturing my ability to offer those things with true abundance and spirit. I was able to work on those parts of my life here and gain a better understanding of my capacity as an artist and human being. I believe in myself more, and I believe in the power of sharing space with other people who are trying to make suggestions about being in the world.”

Based in Philadelphia, Sara Martin brings a dynamic and eclectic background to her work, with experience spanning from 19th-century prison tours to urban farming. Her wide-ranging interests reflect a deep curiosity and passion for engaging with history and community. Currently, Martin is developing a manuscript and documentary on death rituals in the United States, with a specific focus on cultural attitudes surrounding cremation. Sara Martin holds an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has received fellowships from the Jentel Foundation, Yaddo Corporation, Sundress Academy for the Arts and The Fine Arts Work Center. An excerpt from her novel in verse, They Wake Up Swinging, can be found in The Seattle Review.

“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 place the Fine Arts Work Center holds in the hearts and minds of so many writers and artists whose early careers have been nurtured and developed during this formative residency experience.”

“Partnering with The Rona Jaffe Foundation has allowed the Fine Arts Work Center to invest in and nurture emerging women writers of enormous potential,” said Fine Arts Work Center Executive Director Sharon Polli. “Through our collaboration, this Fellowship provides vital support for women writers and makes possible literary achievement of significant depth. Thanks to contributions like this one, that fully underwrites a fellowship at FAWC, we are able to provide our signature residency program for artists and writers.”

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 current 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 nearly 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 an international home for artists and writers in Provincetown, Massachusetts — the country’s most enduring artists’ community. Founded in 1968 by a group of luminary creators including Stanley Kunitz, Robert Motherwell, Josephine and Salvatore Del Deo, and Hudson and Ione Walker, the Work Center has given artists and writers the space and time to pursue their work within a community of peers for more than half a century. The artist-led Work Center supports emerging artists and writers through its world-renowned Fellowship program, and also offers summer workshops and year-round virtual learning opportunities to advance creative practice. Fine Arts Work Center Fellows who have arrived in Provincetown as emerging writers have gone on to win Pulitzer Prizes, National Book Awards, MacArthur Fellowships, and the Nobel Prize in Literature. Visual Arts Fellows have presented their work at the Venice Biennale, The Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, and at other venues around the globe. The Fine Arts Work Center supports artistic freedom, nurtures creative connections, and makes possible artistic achievements important to the larger culture. 

If you are interested in learning how you could support a FAWC fellowship, please contact Executive Director Sharon Polli at 508.487.9960.