AROHO’s $50,000 Gift of Freedom Award

Congratulations to the Winner of the Fifth Gift of Freedom Award

Barb Johnson of New Orleans, LA

Finalists: Bridget Birdsall; CM Burroughs; Nathalie Handal; Gail Kramer; and Rashaan Alexis Meneses.

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AROHO would like to thank all 750 women who submitted many truly excellent applications. We were once again reminded of the astounding talent of so many women writers who do not have the luxury of "a room of her own." We hope each woman who applied will continue to find ways to carve out the freedom she needs to write the stories that beg to be told.

The biennial $50,000 Gift of Freedom award was created according to Virginia Woolf’s tenet that a woman must have a room of her own if she is to write.” That’s why multiple, smaller awards are not given: “Give her just a little bit, and she’s right back where she was a year from now,” says Darlene Chandler Bassett.

AROHO selects award recipients who not only demonstrate their talent, but also their motivation. These women must have solid creative goals and a specific project to accomplish during the two-year term of the grant. They should be able to show a track record of commitment to their art in addition to substantial efforts to be self-sufficient. In determining a recipient, we also consider the potential impact of the artist’s or writer’s proposed work on the broader community. We support women with a social, as well as an artistic vision.

Grant winners agree to a “moral” contract requiring them to commit to a specific goal resulting in a finished work. They receive mentorship and support throughout the grant period, and as a result give back to A Room of Her Own Foundation by going on to mentor successive Gift of Freedom recipients.

We don't deny that the Gift of Freedom Application is arduous — its purpose is two-fold:

The Gift of Freedom Application helps AROHO identify the woman writer with whom we will form a moral contract, leading to the completion of a particular creative project.
The Gift of Freedom Application offers the opportunity to every woman who completes it to enter into a deeper relationship with her own writing. Many women have told us that the application process itself was life-changing. If you are a woman writer, the Gift of Freedom Application may help you to:

identify and establish priorities in your writing life
clarify and strengthen your relationship to the work that is your writing
create a concrete plan to complete the project you've longed to finish
find the will and a way to create a room of your own for yourself

Because we at AROHO know that the application process has the potential to change a woman's relationship to her writing, we do what no other application we know does: We offer you the opportunity to complete the application well before the deadline, and then revise it as necessary. We don't want you to wait until the last minute. You can do the work of the application at the time that it will mean the most to you, and you can update your publication history and other details closer to the deadline so that everything is current. This means extra work for us at AROHO, but we believe it’s worth it to you.

So, don’t delay: Get started strengthening your writing life today! Give yourself a gift and apply for the Gift of Freedom.

Gift of Freedom Award Recipients

2002
Jennifer Tseng

2003
Jeannine Harkleroad

2004
Meredith Hall

2007
Summer Wood

2009
Barb Johnson

Women have sat indoors all these millions of years, so that by this time the very walls are permeated by their creative force, which has, indeed, so overcharged the capacity of bricks and mortar that it must needs harness itself to pens and brushes and business and politics.

Intellectual freedom depends on material things. Poetry depends upon intellectual freedom, and women have always been poor, not for two hundred years, but from the beginning of time ... That is why I have laid so much stress on money and a room of one’s own.
Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own, 1929