The Shay Youngblood Fellowship
Take World Lisbon, in association with the writer and editor Veronica Chambers, is proud to announce the return of the Shay Youngblood Fellowship, for a second year in a row.
Shay Youngblood was a novelist, playwright, poet and visual artist whose groundbreaking work helped shape the landscape of American literature for women of colour and queer writers from the 1980s into the 2020s. Among her notable works was her debut novel, Black Girl in Paris.
This award will gift a stay at our autumn 2026 retreat in beautiful Sintra. The fellowship includes accommodation (shared with one other writer), all breakfast and lunches, three dinners and all activities and writing workshops.
Please note that travel expenses to and from the retreat are not included.
Take World prioritises black and womxn of colour writers and for this scholarship queer black and womxn of colour writers are strongly encouraged to apply.
The application deadline is June 30 2026. We will notify the successful applicant by July 30 2026.
To apply for the fellowship you will need to submit a sample of 500 words in any genre or discipline (except songwriting). Please use this form for more info.
Excerpt from Black Girl in Paris, by Shay Youngblood
Paris. September 1986. Early morning. She is lying
on her back in a hard little bed with her eyes closed, dreaming in French. Langston was here. There is a black girl in Paris lying in a bed on the fifth floor of a hotel in the Latin
Quarter. Her eyes are closed against the soft pink dawn. Delicate maps of light line her face, tattoo the palms of her hands, the insides of her thighs, the soles of her feet like lace. Jimmy was here...
James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Gabriel Garcia Márquez and Milan Kundera all had lived in Paris as if it had been part of their training for greatness. When artists and writers spoke of Paris in their memoirs and letters home it was with reverence. Those who have been and those who still dream mention the quality of the light, the taste of the wine, the joie de vivre, the pleasures of the senses, a kind of freedom to be anonymous and also new. I wanted that kind of life even though I was a woman and did not yet think of myself as a writer. I was a mapmaker.