Few organizations specifically fund historical fiction grants. The American Antiquarian Society is one exception. The AAS Fellowship for Creative and Performing Artists and Writers grants fellowships for research in United States history from the 1600s through the 1800s. The AAS grant targets nonacademic authors, and it provides for a monthly stipend as well as travel expenses. Previous recipients include novelist Robert J. Begiebing, fiction writer Catherine Gammon, novelist and short story writer Cornelia Nixon, creative writer Nicole Cooley and novelist Jeanne Mackin.
You can also find funding for historical fiction through general fiction grants. The Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, for example, provides one-time grants for literary endeavors, including fiction, as well as grants for research projects. Priority is given to writers in financial need, and awards are based on merit. Similarly, the Hobson Foundation presents grants to writers of varying backgrounds. The Foundation's Dream Grant seeks to fund promising ideas instead of past accomplishment, awarding small stipends annually to recipients. Another grant available to fiction writers is the Hodder Fellowship offered by Princeton University. Targeted toward established, nonacademic writers with promising projects, the fellowship funds research and writing at the university for 1 year.
As a historical fiction author, you may be eligible for funding through genre fiction grants as well. For example, if you are completing a historical young-adult fiction novel, then you may qualify for the Phyllis Naylor Working Writer Fellowship. An annual award, the Working Writer Fellowship is geared toward children's or young-adult authors working on book-length projects. The Fellowship specifically seeks to support promising, emerging authors. Past recipients include Aurelia Williams, Graham NcNamee, Deborah Wiles and Barbara Shoup.
Regional grants are another avenue of funding for historical fiction. Many regional grants provide for visual and literary artists. For example, the Michigan Author Award grants small stipends to either Michigan residents or authors whose work is Michigan-specific. Two similar grants are the McKnight Artist Fellowships for Writers, targeted to Minnesota writers, and the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts, geared toward artists and writers in New York. The Bush Foundation, as well, funds artists 25 years and older who reside in Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota and South Dakota.
A number of grants target artists and authors in general, including fiction novelists. Many of these literary grants may also be valuable funding resources. If, for example, you are working on a historical novel set in Scandinavia, then you might qualify for a grant from the American-Scandinavian Foundation, which provides stipends for research in Scandinavia to a variety of creative and academic authors. Similarly, the National Endowment for the Arts regularly awards fellowships in the area of fiction writing, and the United States Artists Fellowships awards more than 50 unrestricted grants to artists and writers every year.