The Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers

Please note: The deadline to apply for a 2025-2026 Cullman Fellowship has passed. Applicants will be notified in March 2025. 

---

The Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers is an international fellowship program open to people whose work will benefit directly from access to the collections at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building—including academics, independent scholars, and creative writers (novelists, playwrights, poets). Visual artists at work on a book project are also welcome to apply. The Center appoints 15 Fellows a year for a nine-month term at the Library, from September through May. In addition to working on their own projects, the Fellows engage in an ongoing exchange of ideas within the Center and in public forums throughout the Library. (Download our brochure.)

Learn More About How to Apply

---

Praise from Former Cullman Center Fellows

"The Cullman Center Fellowship was life-changing for me . . . I felt it in my bones, each morning, a kind of thrill, thinking about how many millions of people had used the library before me." —Hua Hsu, Fellow 2019-2020

"The Cullman Center, and the vast resources of the NYPL (human and material), couldn't have been better for me. I had blocks of uninterrupted time to think and write, and a community of fascinating writers and scholars to engage with, so it was never isolating. I loved being in conversation with novelists and poets and critics, some of whom have become close friends . . . You can tell when a community is thriving, by the way people support one another wholeheartedly. The Cullman Center does an amazing job of allowing people to be both solitary and part of a community, at the same time. It matters deeply to be in an environment where people are writing because they love it, because they are being supported in their writing and valued for it." —Brooke Holmes, Fellow 2018-2019

"Can I come back???" —Colson Whitehead, Fellow 2007-2008

---

The Cullman Center is made possible by a generous endowment from Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman in honor of Brooke Russell Astor, with major support provided by Mrs. John L. Weinberg, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Estate of Charles J. Liebman, The von der Heyden Family Foundation, John and Constance Birkelund, and The Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation, and with additional gifts from Helen and Roger Alcaly, The Rona Jaffe Foundation, The Arts and Letters Foundation Inc., William W. Karatz, Merilee and Roy Bostock, and Cullman Center Fellows.