Submission Materials

Submission of work examples in support of your application

After your application is submitted, you may also receive an email at a later date with further instructions about when to submit examples of your work. Please do not submit work examples until you receive these further instructions.

Applicants in science need not submit examples of their work.

Applicants in scholarship should submit examples of previous work, following the procedures described below.

Applicants in all the arts must submit examples of previous work in order for their applications to receive full consideration by our advisers. If you do not submit examples, you will not receive consideration.

The email will instruct you to log in to our Work Example Submission webpage. Follow the directions on the webpage to upload the digital files and/or links that you are submitting in support of your application. (Details regarding file size limits will be available on the site.)

Applicants in the United States and Canadian competition should submit all work samples to the Foundation by the deadline.

After you final-submit your work examples, you will receive an email confirmation listing the work examples that you submitted.

If you do not receive an acknowledgment of the receipt of your submitted work within a reasonable time, please contact the Foundation at competition@gf.org.

Types of work examples to submit

Recent work is generally the most pertinent. Applicants who are not directly covered in the following categories should follow the procedure outlined for the category closest to their own.

You should not exclusively submit examples that are co-created, co-directed, etc., unless you are applying jointly with another person. For us to properly evaluate your application as an individual artist, writer or scholar, most of your submitted work examples should not be jointly created works.

Painters, Sculptors, and
Graphic Artists

Painters, sculptors, and graphic artists should submit no more than twenty digital images of recent works (e.g. from the last five years). You may include different views of individual pieces if you wish. (Please note that separate images showing different views of an individual piece all count towards the twenty-image limit.) Each image should be in JPEG or PNG format.

We prefer the images to be uploaded in descending chronological order, that is, from most recent to the oldest work, but this is not mandatory. For example, photographers who prefer their images to be viewed in a certain order should upload the images in the sequence that they wished them to be viewed.

Installation or New Media Artists

Installation or new media artists may submit samples as digital files or online links (follow instructions below for film and video makers).

All applicants in the fine arts and photography should have a substantial record of gallery exhibitions to their credit, and a substantial list of collections in which their work is represented.

Poets, Playwrights, Screenwriters, and Writers of
fiction and general nonfiction

Poets, playwrights, screenwriters, and writers of fiction and general nonfiction must submit examples of published books, both as uploaded PDF files and as physical copies (hardcover or paperback) mailed to the Foundation. You may submit no more than three different titles, and you should mail two copies per title. Playwrights and screenwriters are permitted to submit unpublished manuscripts since plays and screenplays are not always published. Books and manuscripts will not be returned. Published writing not regarded as appropriate includes self-published works, publications for which the author has paid, and publications by publishers who do not engage in a process of critical review of submitted work. In addition, genre work (e.g., mysteries, romance, fantasy, etc.) is considered not competitive. We do not consider children’s or young adult books.

For all writers, if you have mainly published in periodicals, or on websites, it might be premature for you to apply here at this stage of your career, given the rigorous nature of our competition.

Theatre or Performance Artists

Theatre or performance artists may submit videos of your work via online links or digital files (follow instructions below for film and video makers).

Scholars

Scholars should submit examples of published books in PDF format; do not submit journal articles; edited volumes, book chapters or essays. Submit no more than three different titles.

Composers

Composers may submit three recent full-length works as digital files or online links, along with accompanying PDF scores if the compositions are notated. Whenever possible, the scores and the recordings should be for the same works.

Photographers

Photographers should submit no more than twenty digital images (follow the same instructions above for painters, sculptors, and graphic artists). Photographers may also submit photography books as PDF files (no more than three separate titles). In addition to the required digital images/book PDFs, photographers may submit physical prints of the images and physical copies of the photography books. Any physical prints that are submitted should match the digital images that are uploaded, and the same for any photography books that are submitted.

Film and Video Makers

Film and video makers should submit no more than three films or video works as digital files or online links. You should not submit more than one example that is co-created, co-directed, etc., if you are applying as an individual filmmaker or video artist. Subtitles should be provided for all non-English language films. Specific cue points may be provided for film or video submissions when you register the work online, but applicants should submit full-length works whenever possible. Trailers should not be submitted.

Choreographers

Choreographers should submit no more than three examples of choreographic works, as digital files or online links, following the same instructions for film and video makers.

At the conclusion of the competition, the digital files will be discarded.

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