Programs » Publication Grants

Application Process, Schedule, and Checklist

The Meiss/Mellon Author’s Book Award is no longer being offered.

Submission Process

The author is responsible for submitting the primary material for the application, including the Author’s Form, a complete list of images, sources, rights requested and obtained, and costs per image, and materials from the manuscript itself. The author is also responsible for requesting and confirming submission of several components of the application from the publisher, including the Publisher’s Form and two or more reader's reports.

The author ensures all materials listed in the Checklist are sent as a separate PDF email attachments to Sarah Zabrodski (receipt provided). (The publisher should submit materials listed below.)

Applications submitted solely by publishers or for production support will not be accepted. Publishers may submit an application for production costs for the same title to the Millard Meiss Publication Fund.

Schedule

The summer deadline for grant applications to be received at the CAA office is June 12, 2015. Awards are made in July, and authors receive notification of awards within four to six weeks. The fall deadline for submissions is September 15, 2015.

Checklist

All components are submitted as follows as separate PDF email attachments or on 8½ x 11 inch paper (printed on one side only without staples)

Submitted by the Author:

• Completed Author’s Form
• A carefully considered cover letter introducing the project and describing the importance of the work
• Narrative description or abstract of the manuscript (two pages maximum)
• Complete picture list or illustration program with sources, rights requested and obtained, and costs per image as a basis for the amount requested in the grant. If requesting a large amount, indicate the most critical images within the illustration program.
• Sample images with figure numbers and captions (up to twenty)
• Partial manuscript, including table of contents, introduction, and one or two sample chapters
• Sample bibliography (five pages minimum; a full bibliography is preferred)
• Author’s dated response to anonymous readers’ reports (see below for more information)
• Author’s curriculum vitae (include dates of degrees and page numbers of published articles)

Prepared and submitted by the publisher:

• Completed Publisher’s Form
• Two or more reader’s reports (see below)

A Note about Reader’s Reports

The author requests the publisher to submit two or more detailed peer reviews of the manuscript that provide substantive, analytical evaluations of the manuscript, addressing its originality, the significance of the scholarly contribution, and the quality of the research and prose. Reader’s reports must be written by authorities on the material of the book. The author should respond to anonymous versions of these reports, clarifying how readers’ responses are incorporated into the manuscript.

Reader’s reports should be submitted by the publisher and should be anonymous to the author but signed and dated for the benefit of the jury (to be kept confidential), and they should not be more than three years old. The jury does not admit reports written by the author’s dissertation adviser or other interested parties, such as a series editor.

A similar award (SAH-MellonAuthor Awards) for emerging scholars publishing monographs on architectural history and the built environment is being administered by the Society for Architectural Historians. For more information, please contact Beth Eifrig, SAH assistant director of programs, beifrig@sah.org or 312-573-1365. Both the CAA and SAH awards will provide leading authors in the early stages of their careers with the financial resources to acquire images for scholarly publications.

Contact

Questions? Please contact Sarah Zabrodski, CAA editorial manager, at 212-392-4424.