Writer Shawnna Thomas reflects on her year as the very first recipient of GrubStreet's Emerging Writer Fellowship. The Fellowship, instituted in 2017, is aimed at developing new, exciting voices by providing one writer per year tuition-free access to Grub classes and the Muse conference

By Katrin Schumann

Media marketing experts agree that maintaining a robust newsletter is one of the best ways for an author to build a core audience--a group of people who will be more interested and committed to you and your work than, say, that stranger lurking on twitter or the random people liking your Instagram shots.

For three weeks every summer, Grub's Teen Fellowship immerses high school students in the writer's life of creative craft and publishing, working with published authors and receiving a stipend for their commitment to the program and their work as artists. 2017 Fellow Justin Celebi reflects on the community he found in the program, and how the friends he made transformed the way he felt about himself as a writer.   

This month, Grub's Founder and Executive Director Eve Bridburg challenged her kids to advocate for the organizations they believe in. Inspired by their efforts, she decided to take the challenge herself and asked Grub donors why it's important to give to Grub.  

Grub Instructor Jonathan Escoffery believes it's important to "give back" to the literary community that sustains his own work. But where's the line between giving enough and giving too much? Originally published at The Writers Room of Boston, where Jonathan is the current Ivan Gold fellow.