Who Applied?: Class of 2023 National Fellows Program Applicants

Every year, New America’s Fellows Program invests in bold thinkers—journalists, scholars, filmmakers, and public policy analysts—who generate big ideas to make an impact and spark new conversations about today’s most pressing challenges.

We carefully select our National Fellows through a rigorous, competitive selection process. We seek to support individuals who put forward far-reaching ideas through projects that draw on in-depth research, keen reporting, nuanced analysis, and a thoughtful storytelling approach.

Over the past 23 years, the Fellows Program has contributed to a deeper understanding of trends around timely topics, from climate change to criminal justice reform. Our fellows have gone on to write bestsellers, produce feature-length films, and win Pulitzer Prizes, MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Fellowships, Emmys, Carnegie Fellowships, and National Magazine Awards. Visit our impact page to learn more.

An extensive analysis of the keywords submitted with each application yielded the following cloud of the top 36 words used this year. The size of the word represents the frequency of use, and the color-coding of the word aligns, broadly, with the issue areas they represent.

The top five keywords based on the frequency of use for the Class of 2023 are race (21), history (20), immigration (17), inequality (16), and journalism (14). By comparison, the top five keywords used last year were history (18), race (15), criminal justice (14), democracy (14), and family (14). Race and history remain the only top-five words that remain the same between the Class of 2022 and Class of 2023 keyword lists.

Every year, candidates submit applications that speak to a range of pressing global and domestic issues. Given the annual application cycle, the program provides a unique insight into the types of issues journalists, academics, and other thought leaders are attuned to in that given year.

Over the past five years, the percentage of applications have been similarly spread across the program’s six issue areas—society, justice, & human rights; science, tech, & innovation; foreign policy; domestic policy; identity; and journalism. Between the Class of 2021 and the Class of 2022, the breakdown of the applications by issue area remained relatively the same. This year, however, there is a shift with a 5 percent increase in applications for the society, justice, & human rights issue area and a 6 percent increase in applications for the foreign policy issue area.

To date, the Fellows Program has supported the publication of 141 books, 13 films, and several award-winning long-form reporting projects. While the Fellows Program has an established reputation as a premier fellowship for nonfiction writers, every year we receive a range of new projects that vary in form and approach. In addition to 13 books, we are supporting two film projects with the acceptance of the Class of 2023.

While 78 percent of the Class of 2023 applicants submitted book projects, there was a steady representation of the number of non-book projects submitted this year. Five percent of the applicants submitted a film project. Additionally, 3 percent proposed a podcast project, and 9 percent presented a multimedia approach to their proposed project.

Of the broader candidate pool, 195 applicants were based in the United States across 32 states and the District of Columbia, and 26 were based abroad across 18 countries.

The U.S.-based applicants concentrated in New York (54), California (28), the District of Columbia (21), Massachusetts (15), and Texas (8). Internationally, applicants based in Mexico (4), Spain (3), and India (3) made up nearly 38 percent of the international candidate pool.

Applications by the state are as follows:

While the Fellows Program attracts applicants from across professions and industries, most of our applicants are journalists (25 percent), followed by those working in academia (23 percent). The applicants by profession are as follows.

The age and gender breakdown for the applicant pool are as follows.

New America’s Fellows Program thanks New America's board of directors, Emerson Collective, the Center for the Future of Arizona, Arizona State University's Center on the Future of War, and the Digital Impact and Governance Initiative program at New America for their support this year.

We would also like to thank Sarah Baline, Naomi Morduch Toubman, Samantha Webster, Joe Wilkes, Joanne Zalatoris, and Jodi Narde for supporting the design and preparation of this report.