Nederlands Letterenfonds Fellowship

The fellowship continues the Writer-in-Residence programme, part of the long-standing collaboration between NIAS and the Dutch Foundation for Literature (Nederlands Letterenfonds). It brings writers together with scholars from the humanities, the social sciences and other disciplines, and allows them to devote themselves full-time to a writing project of their choice within an international academic community.

The 2026 call was for writers based in the Caribbean Parts of the Kingdom. With it, NIAS and the Dutch Foundation for Literature aimed to strengthen the presence of Caribbean literary voices at NIAS and to encourage exchange between literature, scholarship and society across the Kingdom.

The call was open to writers of literary fiction and non-fiction based in Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao, Saba, Sint Eustatius or Sint Maarten who write in Papiamentu, Papiamento, English from the Islands or Dutch. Applicants should be established mid-career or senior writers with a literary track record and a body of work of sustained quality. They should also be keen to exchange ideas with scholars from other disciplines in an academic and international setting.

Applicants propose a literary project that will clearly benefit from a residency at NIAS. The project should be past its initial conception and developed far enough to make full use of the fellowship period.

The working language at NIAS is English, and applicants should speak and write it well enough to take a full part in seminars, workshops and the informal life of the institute.

NIAS and the Dutch Foundation for Literature offer one five-month fellowship each academic year. The fellow receives a stipend of €3,500 per month and reimbursement of an international return ticket. NIAS provides an office, access to its research facilities, and subsidised accommodation in Amsterdam. The fellow takes part in the weekly seminars and the wider academic programme.

A fellowship at NIAS is a full-time commitment. Fellows are expected to be at the institute four days a week from the start to the end of their semester. More information is available under What NIAS offers and Commitment, rules and regulations.

Applications are submitted to the Dutch Foundation for Literature, which sets out the conditions on its website. The Foundation checks applications for eligibility. An independent committee it appoints then assesses the eligible applications on the literary quality of the applicant’s work, the quality and feasibility of the project, and how well the project and applicant suit NIAS. The Foundation sends a ranked recommendation to NIAS. The NIAS Director makes the final selection on the advice of the Fellowship Advisory Committee.

The Dutch Foundation for Literature is the public fund for literature in Dutch, Frisian, Papiamentu, Papiamento and Dutch Sign Language. It supports writers, translators, publishers, literary magazines and festivals, and promotes literature from the Netherlands and its languages at home and abroad.

The first Writer-in-Residence Fellowship was offered in 1999, when the Foundation was still the Fonds voor de Letteren. Since then the fellowship has brought many writers from the Netherlands and abroad to NIAS.