This year, I won a Fulbright Arts grant for Creative Writing.

For the longest time, since I was an undergraduate student at the Fashion Institute of Technology, I knew I wanted to win a Fulbright. I would say I am a competitive person, but I’ve also been doing State Department programs, such as the NSLI-Y program and Critical Language Scholarship, for several years.

It seemed like a natural progression to me to want to apply to the Fulbright, but when I was an undergrad, I had no support. When I ended up at a master’s degree program that supported me, my scholarships advisor told me my undergrad actually failed me because I could’ve had so many more opportunities. I was the first student to apply to the Critical Language Scholarship from FIT and win it.

It was in graduate school that I finally got myself together and applied for the Fulbright the semester before I was supposed to graduate. We began the process in March 2023, and I didn’t really have a clue about the specifics of my project, but with the help of my advisors, we made something I thought was brilliant.

But from the very beginning, I knew I would apply under arts. It was where my heart was, and I couldn’t see myself doing a traditional research project. Kudos to people who do English teaching, but I could never be put in front of a class and be expected to properly teach the language, even if I am a native speaker from the US.

In January 2024, I was notified that I was a semifinalist. I never received an email, but because of the applicant Slack, I knew that they were out. The Slack is a great resource, and I know some people set it up every year for applicants. On April 1, 2024, I was informed I had received the Fulbright and was headed to India.

Here’s how I did it.

I proposed an interdisciplinary project and phrased it for academic-adjacent audiences.

My project I proposed for my Fulbright arts grant was this: I am going to create ethnographic and documentary poetry based around climate change, migration, and India’s Chinatowns. I really could have applied for this Fulbright under a regular research grant because of this: it was something that could be classified as anthropology, and I tried to explain and rationalize it as such.

I did this because I realized that traditional creative writing and arts have an incredible stigma against it. India specifically lists out what they want to see from their projects field-wise, and creative writing is not a field on that list. Anthropology and history is, and I knew I wanted to work with oral histories.

So when I was fleshing out my application, I pointed out to theorists from my master’s education that could guide me in the academic sense, and then also referenced creative writers like Carolyn Forche who did work on the ground. I think this is what ultimately pushed my project through to Fulbright finalist status, truly.

I picked a country (India) that I had a connection to and would have a stronger argument.

Something to consider when you’re applying to an extremely competitive scholarship is what countries you would have a feasible argument for. And if you don’t have one off of the top of your head, you need to consider how you can make an argument as to why you should be sent there compared to someone else.

For example, I was considering three different countries originally for my Fulbright: South Korea, Uzbekistan, and India. I immediately ruled Uzbekistan out because I would be nowhere qualified for a research grant, nor do I speak Russian. When I compared India and South Korea, I realized I had a stronger argument for India because I did my Critical Language Scholarship there.

Because of that, I mapped out a section of my essays saying how my CLS impacted my worldview, and then used it to explain why I had to go to India. The CLS was a major advantage in itself, but during the process, I realized someone really needs to have a connection to this country in order to shine, or demonstrate a thorough interest.

My advisors and I went through four different drafts of my essays.

My master’s university is a top Fulbright producing school, so when it came time to start the application, I reached out to the competitive scholarships office. Now, they ended up matching me with a faculty mentor, and we began bouncing ideas and essays back and forth.

I went through three drafts with my faculty advisor, who met with me in person and even walked me through the process of applying to IRB. It was ultimately determined that I did not need IRB for this specific project, although I did the entire application process.

At one point, the head of the office and study abroad also met with me and went through my essays, and then I had a month left to revise the final draft. I found this process to be so helpful, as everyone involved in the process was experienced with Fulbright and knew how to push my essays to the next level.

Tell a story, but use cold hard facts whenever needed.

This is general application advice, but you need to be able to tell your story in a way that sticks, especially on the Personal Statement. I ended up talking about growing up as a low income Iranian American from Baltimore, then switched to how I studied abroad in high school on a government scholarship and was in love with the world ever since.

You’re going to need to create an application that is reflective of you, and you want your evaluators from the Fulbright side of things to have an emotional connection to you as a human being. Be raw, be honest. Show them who you really are and what got you to this point.

I also used a lot of statistics for my Statement of Grant Purpose, as I was connecting my work back to broader issues about South Asian representation in American publishing and literature. You don’t have to formally cite, especially as you only get two pages here.

I had recommenders, and a language evaluator, from different backgrounds.

Because this was an arts project framed as interdisciplinary, I was very strategic in how I picked out who did my recommendations. I first asked my poetry professor from undergrad, who is well known in industry, to vouch for the poetry side of things.

I then went to one of my graduate school professors who does ethnographic work and communication studies. She would be my more academic reference, showing how I could bridge together the arts with more academic based research.

Finally, I asked my CLS Resident Director for Bengali to write my last recommendation. I wanted her to write a recommendation because I knew she could speak for my interest in India and intercultural connections between India, Bangladesh, and the United States.

At the last minute I asked my old Bengali speaking teacher to do my language evaluation based on the CLS program, which he thankfully agreed to.

My writing sample reflected my Fulbright work.

They explicitly write this on the application for arts and creative writing applicants, but you’re going to want to submit a portfolio that directly connects back to the work you’re going to do on this grant. For my artist’s statement, I explained how the pieces were a mix of ethnographic and witnessing, as well as reflexivity to certain moments in my life.

I used a mix of published and unpublished samples for poems. I maxed out with ten poems, which is literally the most you can do (they require a max of ten pages), and I took some risks. I’d say my entire application was a risk, as I got political with not only the poems, which expressed my Iranian American identity, but also in the Statement of Grant purpose.

If you’re applying to certain countries, I would be careful with your project and what you say sometimes.

Finally: find an affiliate, and start very early.

This is key advice from my experience, as it took me five months to find an affiliate university. I had influential and well connected people helping me throughout this process, but it was still like pulling teeth. I ended up having to submit the affiliate letter at the semifinalist stage, as India thankfully lets you do that.

So start early, and use as many connections as you possibly can to land this affiliate. It will be harder in some countries, like India, and you’re going to get ghosted a lot. I certainly did, and sent even more cold emails when the rejections kept pouring in.

Try and start as early as you can—trust me. It’ll be such a headache when the deadline rolls around and you haven’t heard anything back from anyone. That’s when the panic really starts to set in.

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