by Steven Tagle
The Next Steps: Tips for Your ICWA Application and Interviews
If you’re reading this, congratulations! You’ve already submitted your (ICWA) and have received an invitation to submit a full application, which will be due on or around August 15, 2025.
That is no small feat. The institute regularly receives more than 100 applications for two or three fellowship spots per year, and only a fraction of individuals who submit a letter of interest are invited to send in a full application. If you’ve received an email inviting you to progress to the next step of the process, you can be sure that the staff found your project and qualifications compelling. Along with your invitation to submit a full application, ICWA will provide you with a list of required materials. In this post, I’ll walk you through each component of ICWA’s full application.
You’re one step closer to ICWA’s coveted independent writing fellowship, a two-year opportunity to immerse yourself in a foreign culture and report back on local trends and globally important issues. Let’s get started!
1. CV or Resume
You can resubmit the CV or resume you sent with your letter of interest, but make sure it has been proofread and contains no spelling or grammatical errors. Because this is a writing-intensive fellowship, all the written materials you submit should be considered writing samples. Try to keep your CV to one or two pages maximum.
2. Personal and Professional Autobiography
The personal and professional autobiography is where you can share the intellectual journey that led you to pursue an ICWA fellowship. What spurred your interest in this particular topic and in this country or region of the world? According to the application requirements , “This is not an expanded c.v. or resume, but rather a description of the formative influences in and on your life and their result – namely, you.” ICWA wants to understand the person behind your resume. They want to gauge your self-awareness and ability to reflect on the factors that have shaped the person you are today. This essay should be deeply personal.
In my autobiography, I described why I was interested in exploring border zones and the borders I found within my own life. I described my immigrant background, my queerness, and my love of writing from an early age. I also shared the journey that led me to Greece and my impressions of Athens. Finally, I talked about how I hoped the fellowship would advance my understanding of Greece and my career.
My autobiographical statement was two single-spaced pages. As the requirements state, ICWA’s trustees will receive “only your full application materials and won’t see your initial letter of interest, so please feel free to reuse or repurpose the letter for your application as you like – there’s no need to reinvent the wheel.” I split the contents of my letter of interest roughly in half between the autobiography and fellowship rationale and then expanded upon them to create the final essays.
3. Fellowship Rationale
The fellowship rationale is one of the most important documents in your application package, so make sure to give it lots of thought. According to the requirements, “One of our principal criteria for fellow selection is the candidate’s own vision of what they would like to do and why they would like to do it.” ICWA fellowships are independent, fellow-driven grants of time and money that allow recipients to pursue fieldwork in a foreign country. Fellows have complete freedom to design their fellowships, including where they conduct research, what topics they write about, whom they speak with, and where they conduct research-related travel. In your rationale, try to describe as concretely as possible how you envision spending the two years of your fellowship, including some topics for potential dispatches. You should also describe any preparation you’ve done for the fellowship to demonstrate that you are prepared to begin work soon after you land in your host country. Your rationale will be read by journalists, academics, and area generalists, so keep it clear, personal, and jargon free.
My rationale was between two and two-and-a-half single-spaced pages. I reused the opening and closing anecdotes from my letter of interest and expanded on my analysis of Greece’s significance, recent developments, and Americans’ perceptions of the country. I discussed my extensive preparation for the fellowship and spent a paragraph describing each of the three border regions I planned to live in. Finally, I talked about the importance of my fellowship for ICWA and ways I wanted to experiment with the monthly dispatches.
4. Three Writing Samples
ICWA asks that you provide three writing samples “of which you’re proud.” These samples don’t need to be about the subject of the fellowship. The trustees will use them to evaluate “how well you write and how well your mind works on paper.” Again, given that the main output of the fellowship is the collection of dispatches that fellows write each month, your samples should be engagingly written and carefully argued, polished pieces of writing. They don’t have to be long, but if possible, I recommend submitting samples that are similar to the fellow dispatches: first-person accounts that combine scene, reporting, research, and analysis. You can also submit journalistic articles, features, or profiles; analytical essays; memoir; or other nonfiction.
I submitted a variety of writing samples: a speech I’d written for the U.S. ambassador to Greece on the occasion of President Biden’s inauguration, a personal essay about being gay in Greece and meeting gay Greek men, and an essay I published in the Los Angeles Review of Books about a week I spent volunteering at a Greek refugee camp in 2016. I single-spaced the writing samples as I did my essays, proofread them multiple times, and added a title and a line at the start of each sample to provide context for readers.
5. Draft Budget
ICWA will provide you with a blank budget template and ask you to include a draft monthly budget as part of your application. Your budget will vary depending on the host country or region you choose. Do your best to accurately estimate your living expenses, but also give yourself some padding. The categories I included in my budget were rent and utilities; food; personal expenses, household, and clothing; books, research, and office supplies; communications; recreation; medical expenses; local transportation; language lessons; guide and translator services; and travel and lodging for trips away from my base. If you are accepted, you will revise your budget with the ICWA staff before it is approved by the executive director.
Once you have completed all the application materials, package them together in a single PDF in the order listed in the application requirements document and submit. Fingers crossed!
6. The Next Steps: Interviews with Staff and Trustees
If your full application is successful, you will be invited to interview with the ICWA staff via Zoom. Finalists who pass this initial interview will then be interviewed virtually by ICWA’s board of trustees over a period of roughly two months. I still vividly remember having ten Zoom interviews – some individually, some in groups – from my small kitchen in Athens during Covid. The interviews are an opportunity not only to demonstrate your passion for your project and your qualifications but also to get to know some of the trustees, many of whom are former ICWA fellows and might become your future mentors and friends. ICWA fellows have been reporting on topics around the globe for a century now, and if selected, you’ll be joining a special community of area experts with diverse passions. I recommend familiarizing yourself with the trustees’ bios and work before your interviews, and also sending thank-you emails after your interviews. Enjoy, and make the most of it. Good luck, and may all your hard work pay off!
A Stanford graduate and the recipient of prestigious fellowships from the Fulbright Program and the Institute of Current World Affairs, as well as a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans, Steven Tagle has taught and mentored students for 20 years. As a published writer, journalist, and former speechwriter for the U.S. ambassador to Greece, he knows how to draw out applicants’ unique stories and craft compelling personal statements that help their applications stand out from the pack. Click here to get in touch.
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