The A.C. Bose Grant

for South Asian Speculative Literature

OPEN JANUARY 1, 2025 – JANUARY 31, 2025

Award: $1,000 USD.

Winner announced March 15, 2025.

In 2019, the Speculative Literature Foundation and DesiLit co-sponsored the A.C. Bose Grant in memory of Ashim Chandra Bose, a lover of books—especially science fiction and fantasy. Bose’s children, Rupa Bose and Gautam Bose, founded the grant to honor the legacy of the worlds their father opened up for them. The donors hope that this grant will help develop work that will let young people imagine different worlds and possibilities.

The A.C. Bose Grant annually provides $1,000 to South Asian or Desi diaspora writers developing speculative fiction. South Asia encompasses the countries of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, The Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Work that is accessible to older children and teens will be given preference in the jury process.

This grant, as with all SLF grants, is intended to help writers working with speculative literature. Speculative literature spans the breadth of fantastic writing, encompassing literature ranging from hard science fiction to epic fantasy, including ghost stories, horror, folk and fairy tales, slipstream, magical realism, and more. Any piece of literature containing a fabulist or speculative element would fall under our aegis.

This grant is awarded on the basis of merit. If awarded the grant, the recipient agrees to provide a brief excerpt from their work and an autobiographical statement describing themselves and their writing (500-1,000 words) for our files and for public dissemination on our website and mailing list.

Please note that the goal of these grants is to help as many writers as possible, so recent winners can reapply but will be considered low-priority within a 2-year window of winning.

Grant Application Process

The application form for the A.C. Bose Grant is only active during the open submission period: 12:00AM January 1, 2025 – 11:59PM January 31, 2025 (All times UTC -4). Required materials include:

- A cover letter: Include a short (less than 500 words) autobiographical statement about yourself and your work and a bibliography of previously published work, if applicable. Applicants need not have prior publishing credits to apply.
- A writing sample: Up to 5,000 words of fiction. If you are sending a segment of a novel, novella, or novelette, please include a one-page synopsis as the first page of the document. The submitted work must be speculative, as defined above.

Jurors will deliberate with the goal of announcing winners by March 15th, 2025.

Note The application form for the grant is now closed.

Accessibility

If you are unable to use the form for accessibility reasons, please use the form below or send an email to grants@speculativeliterature.org, and an alternative means of submission will be provided for you.

Testimonials

"The A.C. Bose Grant has been such a gift, both financially and existentially. The grant is a reminder that the writing is what matters, and that somewhere there's an audience for it. It's helped me slow down and focus on the work, and for that I'm tremendously grateful."

"I can't express how much being awarded the Working Class Writers Grant meant... Where monetary concerns were becoming a point of stress, it gave me the space and stability to write more freely."

"The Older Writers Grant gave me validation, encouraging me to keep adding to my stack of rejections. Soon after, my story was short listed for the Aeon Award."

"The Diverse Worlds and Diverse Writers grants gave me the space to work on a series of essays and the beginning of a draft of a new memoir. I'm still so grateful for that small breath of relief."

"I won the Working Class Writers Grant at a time when I was struggling both with my artistic practice and at my day job. It gave me an enormous boost of confidence, as well as financial breathing room"

"Thanks to the SLF Gulliver Travel Grant, it was made possible for me to travel from Tokyo to Kyoto, Japan, where the anchor story of my second book, a novel-in-stories called The Love We Share Without Knowing, took place. The regions of Japan, like any country, are diverse and have their own local cultures. So it was important for me, setting a book in Japan, to be able to get my hands and feet into the soil of the various regions where the settings of the book take place. Without the Gulliver Grant, I may not have been able to visit all of my book's locales. And because of the Gulliver Travel Grant, I believe the book is better for the firsthand experience."