Professor Michael Croley receives NEA grant

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has awarded Denison University Visiting Assistant Professor Michael Croley a $25,000 creative writing fellowship. Croley was one of only 37 writers nationwide who received the highly regarded grant.

Croley was selected from among 1,763 eligible applicants by 23 readers and panelists. Through its creative writing fellowships program, the NEA gives writers the time and space to create, revise, conduct research and connect with readers.

“I’m delighted and honored to receive this prestigious grant, and I’m still in awe that I’m in the company of such a fantastic group of writers,” Croley said.

“Mike Croley brings great energy to his work with our students in the creative writing program, and we are thrilled that he is being recognized with this award,” said Denison Provost Kim Coplin. “We look forward to reading the creative work that this grant will undoubtedly foster.”

Croley has been teaching at Denison for five years, and his work has won awards from the Kentucky Arts Council, the Key West Literary Seminars, and the Sewanee Writers' Conference. In 2011 he was named to Narrative Magazine’s list of “Best New Writers.” His fiction and criticism have appeared in Kenyon Review Online, The Paris Review Daily, Blackbird, Virginia Quarterly Review, SB Nation Longform, and elsewhere.

“Professor Croley is an incredibly gifted writer,” said Denison President Adam Weinberg. “This grant is a tremendous and well-deserved honor. We are proud that Michael is part of the Denison community.”

Since its establishment in 1965, the NEA has awarded more than $5 billion in grants in every state and U.S. jurisdiction, the only arts funder in the nation to do so.

“Since its inception, the creative writing fellowship program has awarded more than $45 million to a diverse group of more than 3,000 writers, many of them emerging writers at the start of their careers,” said NEA Director of Literature Amy Stolls. “These 37 extraordinary new fellows, including Michael Croley, provide more evidence of the NEA’s track record of discovering and supporting excellent writers.”

Since 1990, 81 of the 138 American recipients of the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry and Fiction were previous NEA creative writing fellows.