The Philadelphia-based Pew Charitable Trusts has awarded fellowships to thirteen local artists working in the areas of fiction and creative nonfiction, media arts, and works on paper.

The annual Pew Fellowships in the Arts program awards unrestricted stipends of $50,000 to artists so that they can focus on their art. The fellowships — the largest in the country for which artists can apply — support artists at any stage of their development as well as in a wide variety of aesthetics and traditions. The 2005 fellowships mark the fourteenth year of the program, which has awarded a total of $9.2 million to support some of the region's most gifted artists.

"The Trusts has long felt that artists should be able to dedicate themselves to artistic exploration and production, especially on creative frontiers that the marketplace is not likely to support," said Marion Godfrey, director of civic life initiatives for the Pew Trusts. "These fellowships come with 'no strings attached,' and give artists the freedom to plunge into larger or more complex projects, work with new media, or collaborate with other artists."

For a complete list of this year's winners, see: http://www.pewarts.org/timely.html.