Scholarships for 2025

Scholarship Details

Denise M. Asper was a California attorney and Director of Prisoner Litigation for the 9th Circuit Federal Courts from 2008 through 2020. She believed strongly in Social Justice. She facilitated a discussion group at San Quentin and specialized in Alternate Dispute Resolution (ADR), Restorative Justice and Re-Entry programs. This scholarship honors Denise Asper’s memory as it recognizes a writer formerly involved in the Justice System who is now engaged in the honorable work of Re-Entry.

Scholarship Details

Applications are open to anyone re-entering the mainstream after time in the justice system.  Social workers and attorneys do not qualify, only those formerly in the justice system.

Submissions can be about anything you choose and does not have to be related to your experience of the justice system, unless that is what you want to write about. You can write about your grandmother’s favorite recipes or how you learned to play an instrument. The subject of your submission is completely up to you.

Submission Guidelines:

• 11 pages total, using standard formatting
  • Double-spaced
  • Standard margins left and right, top and bottom
  • Standard font, like Times New Roman, nothing fancy or tricky
  • 12 point font size
  • Pages numbered
  • Name on the bottom of each page

• Page 1
  Cover Letter with your name, contact info, anything about your biography that you want to share and your reason for writing this story.
• Pages 2-11
  10 pages of your writing. If this sample is cut from a larger piece, it does not have to be the first 10 pages.

The work is not required to have a title at this point

Thank you to the donor, Mary Rakow

Mary Rakow, Ph.D. is a beloved freelance editor. She is both rigorous and encouraging, insightful and kind. She is also a writer.

A theologian with graduate degrees from Harvard and Boston College, Rakow’s debut novel, THE MEMORY ROOM was shortlisted for the Stanford University International Saroyan Prize in Literature, a PEN USA/West Finalist in Fiction listed among the Best Books of the West by The Los Angeles Times. The most prestigious LANNAN FOUNDATION honored her as a Literary Fellow with a $75,000. prize. The novel, published by Counterpoint Press, has been in print continuously for over 20 years.

Her second novel, THIS IS WHY I CAME earned excellent reviews in The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Commonweal, Christian Century, O Magazine, Ploughshares. Writing with deep feeling and a questioning faith this novel, also published by Counterpoint, appeared on reading lists for courses at Princeton and Yale.

Interested in the visual arts, she was commissioned to write the first book-length treatment of Cuban-born artist Enrique Martinez Celaya's work.  It is titled MARTINEZ CELAYA, WORKING METHODS.

Mary is a beloved editor.  She enjoys working with writers just starting out and those with writing accolades. Her deepest commitment is to help each writer find and produce the story only they can write.  Her commitment to this is radical. For this reason, she takes literary rules and conventions only half seriously and aims, instead, to guide the writer away from the production of more stuff and toward the production of literary art.

Moderately priced, she gives a fee discount to SFWC attendees and their colleagues.

For inquiries: maryrakow.com

Note: Mary Rakow will not choose the winner or influence the decision in any way.