Ace begins with an author's note in which I lay out the scope of the book and emphasize that there is so much more to say. I hope Ace is a valuable book, but I do not believe it is—as it has sometimes been described— "definitive" or "comprehensive." No book about a community can or should be the "definitive" one. This both places too much pressure on the book in question and erases the need to continue supporting and publishing marginalized writers. What we need is not a comprehensive tome, but a canon; not a focus on 101, but to build out the world of ace and aro literature in all its complexities. 

With that goal in mind, I began holding free weekly office hours for emerging ace and aro writers. But office hours can only do so much and I want more writers to receive the kind of sustained feedback that comes from a course. To that end, I am offering five $400 creative writing scholarships to writers on the ace and/or aro spectrums. 

How It Works
There are five scholarships, each with different requirements: 
1. One scholarship is open to anyone who is ace and/or aro (including demi, gray, flux, aro and not ace, and so on)
2. One scholarship is reserved for someone who is ace/aro and also a person of color
3. One scholarship is reserved for someone who is ace/aro and also genderqueer (I'm using this to broadly mean anything under the genderqueer umbrella: trans, gender non-conforming, non-binary, and so on)
4. One scholarship is reserved for someone who is ace/aro and also disabled
5. One scholarship is reserved for someone who who is ace/aro and also over 35

These scholarships will be delivered in the form of a gift certificate to a writing workshop of your choice, selected from the following: Catapult , Corporeal Writing, Grub Street, Hugo House, and Story Studio. All of these workshops offer classes in multiple genres. Please note that you must be 18 to apply to my scholarship, as that is an age requirement for some of these workshops. You are free to apply to as many as you qualify for. 

To apply, fill out this Google Form by midnight (Eastern) on Sunday, June 12. The Google Form is short by design. I believe that the typical application process is broken and that long essays and letters of recommendation are a burden. I am not interested in being a gatekeeper. While the application does ask for information about the genre in which you work,  that's more for my own curiosity about all the aspec writers out there. I will read through them and essentially pick at random. 

By the end of June, I will have read through all the applications and notified five winners. (If you do not hear back by July 1, please assume you have not been selected. As the only person running this, I unfortunately don't have time to respond to everyone individually.) If you are selected, I will contact you to ask for your writing workshop preference and send you the certificate. I hope it'll be one step toward helping you develop your skills and find your writing community so that ace and aro literature can flourish.