Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers Fellowship 2027–2028: A $90,000 Nine-Month Residency at the New York Public Library for 15 Scholars, Writers, and Artists

Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers Fellowship 2027–2028: A $90,000 Nine-Month Residency at the New York Public Library for 15 Scholars, Writers, and Artists

The Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers is one of the few fellowships in the United States that treats writing a serious book as a full-time job worth paying for. Housed inside the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building — the landmark research library with the stone lions on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan — the Cullman Center appoints 15 Fellows a year and gives each of them a $90,000 stipend, a private office, and unrestricted access to one of the great research collections in the world for a nine-month term. For the 2027–2028 year, completed applications are due by 5 p.m. EDT on Friday, September 25, 2026.

What makes the Cullman Center unusual is the breadth of who it funds. It is not only for tenured historians or only for novelists. In a single cohort you will find academics sitting next to independent scholars, investigative journalists next to poets, translators next to visual artists. The common thread is a serious project that will benefit from the Library’s collections and from a year spent in the company of other people doing ambitious work. This guide explains exactly what the fellowship provides, who qualifies, how the application and selection process works, and how to give your proposal the best possible chance in a famously competitive pool.

Key Details at a Glance

Use the table as a first screen. The sections below explain the reasoning behind each line so you can decide whether the 2027–2028 cycle is worth the substantial effort a strong application requires.

What the Fellowship Offers

The headline benefit is the $90,000 stipend for the nine-month term. That figure is deliberately generous: it is meant to let a Fellow set aside teaching, freelancing, or other paid work and concentrate on a single project for an academic year. For a mid-career writer or an independent scholar without a university salary, that kind of protected time is the scarcest resource of all, and it is precisely what the Cullman Center is designed to buy.

But the money is only part of the package. Each Fellow receives a private office with a computer inside the Schwarzman Building, along with full access to the Library’s physical and electronic resources. That access is not trivial. The research collections at the Schwarzman Building run to millions of items — rare manuscripts, archives, maps, prints, photographs, and a deep reference apparatus — and being able to request material and have it delivered to a desk a few steps from your office changes how research actually gets done. Fellows also gain the informal but real benefit of proximity to the Library’s curators and specialist staff, who know the collections better than anyone.

The third benefit is the community. Fifteen people working in the same corridor, eating lunch together, and hearing each other’s work-in-progress talks form a genuine intellectual circle. Many Fellows describe the weekly rhythm of the Center — including the requirement that each Fellow deliver a lunchtime talk on their current project — as the thing that pushed a stalled book forward. You are accountable to a smart, curious audience that is reading and thinking alongside you.

Who Should Apply

The Cullman Center casts a wide net by design. Eligible applicants include:

• Academics at any career stage who need a year away from teaching to finish or substantially advance a book.
• Independent scholars without a university affiliation, for whom this stipend can be the difference between a project happening and not happening.
• Journalists working on long-form, book-length reporting or narrative nonfiction.
• Creative writers — novelists, playwrights, and poets — working on a defined literary project.
• Translators bringing significant works into English.
• Visual artists whose work draws meaningfully on research and archival material.

Foreign nationals are welcome to apply as long as they are conversant in English, which makes this a genuinely international competition rather than a U.S.-only one. Applicants will, however, need to be able to be physically present in New York for the term.

There is one firm exclusion worth stating plainly: people seeking funding for research leading directly to a degree are not eligible. This is not a dissertation fellowship. If your project is your PhD thesis or a required component of a degree, the Cullman Center is not the right target, and applying anyway wastes your time and the committee’s.

The strongest candidates share two things: a project that will clearly benefit from the Library’s collections, and a project that is at a stage where a concentrated nine months will produce something substantial — a finished manuscript, a major portion of a book, a completed body of work.

The Residency Requirement

The Cullman Center is an in-person fellowship, and it takes that seriously. Fellows are expected to work at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building five days a week, Monday through Friday, for the entire term. Your primary work location must be that building specifically — not one of the Library’s other research divisions or branch locations.

This matters for two practical reasons. First, it means you need to plan for living in or commuting to Manhattan for roughly nine months, from September through May. Applicants who cannot relocate or who need a largely remote arrangement are not a good fit, and should factor housing and cost of living in New York into their decision before applying. Second, the residency requirement is the mechanism that creates the Center’s community. The daily presence of all fifteen Fellows is what turns a group of individual grantees into a working intellectual cohort, and it is a large part of what past Fellows say made the year valuable.

How the Application Works

Applications are submitted online through the New York Public Library’s application portal. Based on the Center’s own guidelines, a complete application generally includes:

• A research or project proposal describing what you intend to accomplish during the fellowship year.
• A curriculum vitae documenting your background and prior work.
• Letters of recommendation written specifically for this application. The Center is explicit that it will not accept dossier letters in place of fresh letters of recommendation, so plan to ask your referees for new letters tailored to this project. Confirm the exact number required in the application portal before you begin, since that requirement is set there.
• A work sample — a creative writing sample for writers, or an art work sample for visual artists — that demonstrates the quality of your writing or work.

The exact length limits and formatting rules for the proposal and sample are specified inside the application portal rather than on the public page, so read the portal instructions carefully once the cycle opens and follow them exactly.

One important logistical note: up to five of the fifteen appointments may be joint NYPL/ACLS Fellowships, offered in partnership with the American Council of Learned Societies. Applicants interested in being considered for a joint award must submit a separate ACLS application, and the ACLS deadline is September 17, 2026 — about a week earlier than the Cullman Center’s own September 25 deadline. If a joint award is relevant to you, calendar that earlier date now so it does not catch you out.

Timeline for the 2027–2028 Cycle

The cycle runs on a predictable annual rhythm. For the 2027–2028 year:

• Applications open: in the summer of 2026 through the online portal.
• ACLS joint-application deadline: September 17, 2026.
• Cullman Center application deadline: September 25, 2026, at 5 p.m. EDT.
• Notification: the selection committee typically notifies applicants in the first months of the following year, ahead of the fellowship year.
• Fellowship term: September 2027 through May 2028, a nine-month residency.

Because the deadline is a hard cutoff at 5 p.m. Eastern, treat the days before it as reserved for final assembly, not for drafting. Recommendation letters in particular are the part of any application most likely to arrive late, since they depend on other people’s schedules.

How to Build a Strong Proposal

The Cullman Center selection committee is known for prioritizing top-quality writing and ambitious, dynamic scholarship and literature at the highest level. In practice, that means the proposal itself is a writing sample: a muddy, jargon-heavy proposal undercuts a project no matter how good the underlying idea. A few principles worth following:

• Write the proposal for an intelligent non-specialist. The committee is interdisciplinary. A brilliant argument buried in field-specific jargon will lose readers who are not in your subfield. Make the stakes legible to a smart generalist.
• Show why the Library, specifically. The Center funds projects that will genuinely benefit from being at the Schwarzman Building. Name the collections, archives, or materials you plan to use, and explain what proximity to them makes possible that would not be possible elsewhere.
• Be honest and precise about stage and scope. Reviewers want to fund projects that will produce something real during the nine months. Say clearly where the project stands and what you will realistically finish or advance in an academic year.
• Choose your work sample deliberately. The sample should represent your best, most characteristic work and should ideally connect to the sensibility of the proposed project.
• Line up strong, specific recommenders early. Because dossier letters are not accepted, your referees need enough lead time to write fresh letters that speak directly to this project and your ability to complete it.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

• Applying with a degree-driven project. Research leading directly to a degree is explicitly ineligible. Do not try to reframe a dissertation as something else.
• Ignoring the residency requirement. This is a five-days-a-week, in-person fellowship at a specific building in Manhattan. If you cannot commit to that, it is not the right fellowship.
• Missing the earlier ACLS deadline. If you want to be considered for a joint NYPL/ACLS Fellowship, the separate ACLS application is due about a week before the Cullman Center deadline.
• Submitting dossier letters. The Center will not accept them; letters must be written specifically for this application.
• Treating the proposal as a formality. For a fellowship that prizes writing, the proposal is a core part of how you are judged, not an administrative hurdle.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much is the stipend? $90,000 for the nine-month term.

How many Fellows are chosen? Fifteen a year, up to five of whom may hold joint NYPL/ACLS Fellowships.

Can I apply from outside the United States? Yes. Foreign nationals who are conversant in English are welcome to apply, but Fellows must be present at the Schwarzman Building for the term.

Is this a good fit for a PhD student? No, if the work is for a degree. People seeking funding for research leading directly to a degree are not eligible.

Does the fellowship provide housing? The award is a stipend plus office space and Library access; it does not include housing, so budget for living costs in New York.

When is the deadline? September 25, 2026, at 5 p.m. EDT for the 2027–2028 year — with a separate ACLS deadline of September 17, 2026 for joint-award applicants.

Official Links and Next Steps

Start with the New York Public Library’s official Cullman Center fellowships page at nypl.org/about/fellowships-institutes/cullman-center-scholars-writers/fellowships. Read the full eligibility and guidelines, then move to the online application portal to see the exact proposal length limits, work-sample specifications, and the required number of recommendation letters, all of which are set there.

If the fellowship fits, the most useful thing you can do now is two-fold: draft a clear, jargon-free proposal that names the specific Library collections your project needs, and contact your recommenders early so they have time to write fresh, project-specific letters well before the September 25, 2026 deadline. A year of protected time and $90,000 to write the book you have been carrying around is worth applying for carefully.