The McCoy Grant for Bookseller Writers Now Accepting Applications for 2025

Applications are now being accepted for the 2025 McCoy Grant for Bookseller Writers. The grant is offered by SIBA in partnership with  New York Times bestselling author Sarah McCoy, (Mustique Island) for any unpublished southern women or nonbinary booksellers who harbor ambitions to be published writers.

Two grants of $1,500 each will be awarded to be used toward craft development (writing classes, retreats, conferences, travel), work-related materials (notebooks, laptops, software, research, etc.), childcare, bills, or any other financial obstacle.

"It is a great honor to have been chosen...I am truly grateful for this grant and have been inspired to work more diligently as a creative," said 2024 grant recipient Maya Martin from Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi.

"I’ve been holding my writing close for the past year, not quite ready to share it with the world and wondering if there would ever be a right time," said 2024 grant recipient Ally Kirkpatrick, owner of Old Town Books in Alexandria, Virginia. "Winning this award gives me the confidence boost to continue finding my voice and sharing my story about maternal mental health."

Author Sarah McCoy created the grant because of her own experience as a struggling young writer. "I’ve dreamt of being able to do an initiative like this since I was in graduate school teaching young writing students during the day to pay for my own MFA creative writing courses at night. While my weekends went to grading papers, studying, and writing, I also took on a weekend job with flexible hours to navigate the bills that seem to never stop piling up. I swore then that when I could, I would do my best to help other writers in similar financial straits."

Applications are currently open and will close on March 21, 2025. Recipients will be announced in July, 2025. To be eligible, the applicant must be an unpublished southern woman or nonbinary bookseller living in one of the states in SIBA territory: Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, and Mississippi, and must have a novel, memoir, essay collection or poetry collection in progress.

Full eligibility criteria and grant application

"If you’re a hoper, a dreamer, a story stoker opening your laptop and a 99¢ can of tuna fish on the coffee table for dinner while you do the work that really lights your fire… then you’re a kindred spirit," says McCoy. "That was me, too. Still is on many nights. You are not alone. $1,500 won’t magically transform everything, but it’s enough to buy a loaf of bread to go with that tuna. I’m grateful to partner with the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA), an organization dedicated to literacy, diversity, and creating a world where all stories are given equal voice and respect. Thank you for being our bookseller champions!"

Read more about the McCoy Grant

SARAH McCOY is the New York Times, USA Today, and international bestselling author of the novels Mustique Island,  Marilla of Green Gables, The Mapmaker’s Children, The Baker’s Daughter, a 2012 Goodreads Choice Award Best Historical Fiction nominee, The Time It Snowed in Puerto Rico, the novella “The Branch of Hazel in Grand Central and Le souffle des feuilles et des promesses(Pride and Providence).  Her work has been featured in Newsweek, Lit Hub, Real Simple, The Millions, Your Health Monthly, Huffington Post, Writer Unboxed, and other publications. She hosted the NPR WSNC Radio monthly program “Bookmarked with Sarah McCoy" and previously taught English writing at Old Dominion University and at the University of Texas at El Paso.

There's One Week Left to Apply for the Carla Gray Scholarship!

The Carla Gray Memorial Scholarship for Emerging Bookseller-Activists is unlike any other scholarship the Binc Foundation has offered. This year-long professional development scholarship is intended to help a bookseller with fewer than five years of experience connect with other booksellers, publishers, and authors and to establish the long-term relationships that keep the book industry thriving. The scholarship includes funds to attend Winter Institute 2019 and a 2019 fall regional trade show. The bookseller will also be granted funding to support a community outreach project of their own design. Applications are open now. 

You have till October 9 to apply!

Applications Open for the 2018 PAT CONROY SCHOLARSHIPS, sponsored by PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE

The Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA) invites booksellers to apply for the 2018 Pat Conroy Scholarships. The scholarships honor the late author whose lifetime achievements have meant so much to Southern booksellers. They are made possible by Penguin Random House, whose Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, Dial Press Trade Paperbacks, and Random House Audio imprints publish Mr. Conroy’s works in hardcover, paperback, and audio editions respectively.

These scholarships are for booksellers who have never attended a SIBA Discovery Show, in keeping with Penguin Random House’s tradition of supporting educational programming for booksellers at the event.  The scholarships will cover up to $1,000 of the recipient’s travel, hotel, and meal expenses for the Discovery Show first-timers. To be eligible, a bookseller must be a full-time employee of a SIBA-member bookstore, working at any level or capacity.

SIBA Executive Director Wanda Jewell said, “We believe that nurturing the next generation of career booksellers is one of the best things we can do to advance the future of bookselling.  These scholarships Penguin Random House is endowing mean so much to the booksellers chosen. They benefit from new educational opportunities, and connect with other booksellers, authors, and publishers. They also bring a refreshing and inspiring energy to the show, which is so gratifying to witness.  How appropriate that these awards honor Pat Conroy, who was so kind and generous with all of us, and in particular, to those new to our industry.”

“Pat Conroy is beloved by his readers, his publisher, Penguin Random House, and by SIBA. So, it is with great devotion for our author and enormous respect for the members of SIBA, whom he ardently supported, that we endow this next generation of bookseller-education scholarships for them in his honor,” added Jaci Updike, President, Sales, Penguin Random House.

To be considered for a Pat Conroy Scholarship, booksellers can self-nominate, or be nominated by other booksellers or sales reps. Owners and managers are strongly encouraged to nominate frontline booksellers who are interested in bookselling as a career. The deadline for nominations for the 2018 Pat Conroy Scholarships is July 15, 2018.

Scholarship recipients will be announced on August 1.

The #2018 SIBA Discovery show will be held September 13-15 at the Innisbrook Resort in Tampa, Florida.

To apply, the nominated bookseller should fill out the information below, and email it to wanda@sibaweb.com:

• YES! I have never been to SIBA and I would love to go.

• Name

• Address

• E-mail address

• Bookstore: where do you work? How long have you worked there and what is your current role?

• Make Pat Conroy proud! Please write a short (two paragraphs is ideal) description of why you love being a bookseller and what you hope to get out of SIBA.

Twenty-seven booksellers have been selected to receive more than $100,000 as part of the Book Industry Charitable (Binc) Foundation’s 2018 Higher Education Scholarship Program. Providing financial assistance to help booksellers achieve their dreams is one of the most rewarding parts of maintaining the bookseller safety net, according to Binc Executive Director Pam French. “Booksellers are people who make the world a better place. We hope that by providing them with the opportunity to learn and grow through higher education, we are helping them change the world even more,” she said. “Congratulations to all of the college scholarship winners!”

The recipients were selected from 159 applicants comprised of bookstore owners, booksellers, former Borders Books employees, or their dependents. In total, $109,000 was awarded to help booksellers from 23 stores in 21 states reach their educational goals at 27 different schools. 

Four of the recipients are SIBA booksellers: Abigail Parkes of FoxTale Book Shoppe in Woodstock, GA,  Hannah Richardson of Malaprop's Bookstore/Cafe in Asheville, NC, Sarah Skinner of Island Bookstore in Duck, NC, and Julie Wade of Downtown Books & News in Asheville, NC. 

A list of scholarship recipients, including their goals and favorite books, can be found here. Information about how bookstore employees can apply for the 2019 Higher Education Scholarship Program will be released early next year.