We all know that, for all its rewards, becoming an author is incredibly challenging. The number of authors who can concentrate on their written works as their primary source of income has been quietly diminishing for decades. But that doesn’t stop creative souls from finding a way to spin stories for the entertainment and education of readers the world over.

One program put into place to help professional authors with the more pecuniary aspects of the writing life is the Ontario Arts Council’s Recommender Grants for Writers program. Eligible writers (Ontario-based authors who fit the publication history criteria) are invited to submit basic information about their writing project, a writing sample, and a few other documents to the program.

Recommenders (like us!) evaluate the materials and (naturally) recommend funding to the projects deemed to be of merit. Just like it says on the tin! Eligible artists could receive up to $5,000 to help cover artists’ fees, research expenses, resources and other expenses.

Programs like this not only help emerging Canadian authors to launch their careers, but also nurture artists of all sorts to develop their skills and work on their creative projects. It’s more important than ever for new and underrepresented writers to be granted opportunities to their tell their stories and make their voices heard. This program helps them do it.

We recommend that you do a little research on the recommenders and consider submitting to the organizations whose specialties and genres align best with your own work. For example, at the Porcupine’s Quill, we tend to focus on literary fiction, non-fiction, poetry and literary graphic novels, so if you’ve written a children’s book or a genre novel, we probably wouldn’t be the best fit. On the other hand, books that highlight the intersection of artistic forms–those are our jam!

Submissions to the program are open now. We hope to see a few submissions from our lovely PQL friends and fans in the submission portal.

Best of luck!