In 2024, the Kit Reed Travel Fund will offer three $350 awards to BIPOC women & non-binary writers (reserving one exclusively for a Black and/or Indigenous writer) to attend a writing program or residency.  In recognition of Covid-related restrictions, attending a conference, workshop, residency, or taking a writing course can be in-person or online. The $350 grant can be used toward travel, tuition, rent, child-care, groceries, or whatever else the writer deems necessary for attending their writing opportunity.

Kit Reed was a prolific novelist and short story writer, who cut her teeth in male-dominated newsrooms. A writing professor at Wesleyan University, she encouraged her students and kept personal connections with them long after they left. According to novelist and former student, Alexander Chee, “Her willingness to accept a call was an openness to another kind of connection and conversation with us, one that, for many of us, would go on for the rest of the time we knew her.” Kit Reed was a good friend and writers’ advocate who not only encouraged her marginalized students, colleagues, and writer friends to apply for advancement, but would find ways to help them behind the scenes wherever she could. This fund was made possible by a donation from her family in honor of her work as a writer, feminist, professor, and mentor.  

To be eligible

You must identify as a BIPOC writer including mixed-race and multiracial identities.
You must be a member of Women Who Submit Los Angeles Headquarters or a WWS chapter.
You must have proof of acceptance to an upcoming course, workshop, residency, or proof of a panel or speaker acceptance at an upcoming conference or festival.

How to Apply

Applications should be filled out within two months of the intended conference, festival, workshop, residency, or writing course or within one month of attending. For example, if you are accepted for a workshop that is to take place the first week of June, the earliest you can apply is the first week of April. Or if you attended a workshop the first week of June, and you would like a reimbursement, the application must be filled out by the first week of July.

Applications must be submitted online through this online form. We recommend drafting your responses to these brief narrative questions in a Word Document and then cutting and pasting the answers into the  online form where appropriate.

***Before you submit the application, please send your Curriculum Vitae or Resume and proof of acceptance to admin@womenwhosubmitlit.org. Please put "Kit Reed Travel Fund" in the subject line.***