| Emily Skillings |
The Foundation awarded 14 fellowships totaling $560,000 to support early mid-career individuals. Each recipient received an unrestricted $40,000 fellowship. The funds provide time to advance independent creative and scholarly work on a major project.
Per the George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation, "Since 1954, over 500 Howard Fellows have used the fellowship to transition from promising early-career status to recognized leaders in their fields. Howard Fellows have authored bestsellers, directed Oscar nominated feature-length films, and earned some of the world’s most prestigious honors including Pulitzer Prizes, the Rome Prize, and the Whiting Award. They have gone on to MacArthur, Guggenheim, and Carnegie Fellowships.
"The Howard Foundation carefully selects its Fellows through a rigorous and competitive multi-round process. This year’s Fellows stood out among a competitive candidate pool of 258 applicants, across 41 states and the District of Columbia."
Emily Skillings was awarded her fellowship in the field of poetry, for a project titled Of Pearl.
Per Skillings's biography for the fellowship, "Emily Skillings is the author of the poetry collections Fort Not (2017) and Tantrums in Air (2025), both published by The Song Cave. Tantrums in Air was named one of the best poetry books of 2025 by The New York Times. Skillings is the editor of Parallel Movement of the Hands: Five Unfinished Longer Works by John Ashbery, which was published by Ecco/HarperCollins in 2021. She is a member of the Belladonna* Collaborative, a feminist poetry collective, small press, and event series. Her work has been supported by residencies and fellowships from the T.S. Eliot Foundation and the New York Foundation for the Arts."
We look forward to welcoming Emily to Villanova this fall!
For more information about Emily Skillings and the Howard Foundation Fellowship, visit the Foundation's website.