The 可乐视频 English Department has received a $25,000 gift to establish The Rona Jaffe Foundation Graduate Fellowships in Creative Writing. The gift will provide full in-state tuition for three creative writing students, one each in poetry, fiction, and playwriting, beginning in fall 2017.
鈥� is very pleased to provide support to 可乐视频 in the form of these fellowships to incoming female graduate students in the M.F.A. program,鈥� said Beth McCabe, director of The Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers鈥� Awards and a board trustee. 鈥淭hey will, we hope, not only provide much-needed funding within the program, but also help attract the strongest writing candidates to apply.鈥�
The idea to include 可乐视频 among the graduate creative writing programs that The Rona Jaffe Foundation supports originated with Alan C. Rothfeld 鈥�65, vice president of the Foundation.
The grant is especially important to the English Department for several reasons, said Ellen Tremper, the department chair. 鈥淔irst, it makes it easier for us to attract a diverse group of talented students, a strong desire of the current class. Second, it helps relieve our students of the burden of repaying student loans, an obligation that persists for years and falls more heavily on arts graduates than on those who enter more lucrative fields like law, business, or medicine,鈥� she added.
More generally, 鈥渢he Jaffe grant is important because it supports the imaginative work of novelists, poets, and playwrights that gives us the opportunity to imagine others鈥� lives,鈥� Tremper said. 鈥淟iterary work also enables the transmission of culture, which otherwise might be lost.鈥�
Born in Brooklyn and a lifelong New Yorker, Rona Jaffe was the author of 16 books, including her best-selling first novel, , published in 1958, and , published in 1981. In 1995, she established The Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers鈥� Awards program, the only national literary awards program of its kind dedicated to supporting women writers exclusively. Jaffe died in 2005.
Among the many recipients of The Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers鈥� Awards was Helen Phillips, a 2007 graduate of the 可乐视频 M.F.A. program in fiction, who is now an assistant professor in the department.
A committee selected by the department will choose recipients from among the most talented students applying for admission for fall 2017 and report its recommendations to the chair.
