As part of James Patteron’s  “Go Finish Your Book!” campaign, the acclaimed author has given a grant to 12 recipients nationwide of up to $50,000 to help them complete their manuscripts.

Two of the 12 recipients, Ajay Patri and Jungin Angie Lee, have either gone through or are in the process of completing the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa.

 Patri is a Master of Fine Arts in Fiction candidate at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop while Jungin Angie Lee graduated with an MFA from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop in May.

Patterson chose from hundreds of submissions submitted from across the nation. 

Lan Samantha Chang, the director of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, expressed her excitement in a statement to The Daily Iowan. 

“It is intensely meaningful to all of us at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop that a pathbreaking writer such as James Patterson is supporting first-time novelists,” she said. “I’m especially thrilled that Angie and Ajay are among the inaugural recipients for this national honor.”

On the campaign’s website, Patterson broke down why he gave out the grants.

“I write too many books,” he wrote. “I know how hard it is to write one — and how easy it is to get frustrated and stop writing. But the world needs your stories. That’s why I’ve launched a grant campaign to help writers get the time, the tools, and the support they need.”

Patri will use the grant to continue to work on his book, “A Call for Help,” which centers on a woman trying to raise money for her daughter’s wedding a day before the event.

The grant will help Patri continue writing the book after his time at the workshop without having to worry about another source of income. 

“Something the Iowa Writers Workshop gives you is this period of time where all you’re expected to do is just write, to experiment, to try new things, to see what you’re capable of,” he said. “And I think that’s what the grant does.”

Patri came to the  Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 2024 from Bangalore, India. He will graduate in the spring of 2025.

The inspiration for the book sprouted from Patri’s time in India while he was getting married during the pandemic. He talked with other people around that time who were spending obscene amounts of money to get their children married. 

“It was both unconscionable but also really compelling,” he said. “And I think when you have those two things coming together, it usually means the story has some legs.”

Patri uses the book to dig deeper into what weddings mean in India and how they are often romanticized on social media. 

“There’s this idea of the ‘Big Fat Indian Wedding’ with all the noise and the color and the food,” he said. “And while that is true, there is this whole other ecosystem out there where people are often struggling to get their children married.”

Patri is grateful for the workshop’s role in allowing him to grow in a space in a space with other competitive writers.

“Everyone here is serious about writing,” he said. “Everyone wants to get better, but at the same time, the writers here also recognize everyone here is on their own journey towards getting better and writing is not a zero sum game where you need to go forward at the cost of someone else.”

Patri will use the grant money to work on his novel while also finishing a collection of short stories he’s been developing during his time at the workshop. 

Lee will use the grant to continue to work on a short story collection she started as her MFA thesis.

Lee now lives in the San Francisco Bay area, but she was grateful to call Iowa home during her time at the workshop.

“I had always heard about Iowa as sort of that literary hub, and I was so honored and grateful to be able to attend the MFA program led by the amazing Lan Samantha Chang,” she said. 

It became apparent to her early on that literature was at the heart of the city.

“Iowa is a place where, when I was living there, people said the NBA and they were talking about the National Book Award, rather than the National Basketball Association,” she said. 

Lee is moved by the financial impact of the grant, but also by the confidence boost it gives her as a writer.

“All writers are always looking for little signs to keep going,” she said. “This one was a very generous sign I received from James Patterson, and I was so grateful and honored. His spirit of giving back to other writers, I was really moved by that as well.”

Lee’s short stories will focus on friendship, family, and disability. 

Growing up with spinal muscular atrophy, Lee never saw enough accurate representation of disabled characters in the books she read. 

Lee would often find a disability used as a metaphor for a character being wicked. She often found conditions like blindness being used to signal a character having mental, spiritual, or psychological blindness even from universally classic authors like Shakespeare.

“I was drawn to writing stories that put disability at its forefront, yes, but disability is not really a metaphor for anything else,” she said. “It’s just a way of being.”

Lee is aiming to make her collection as impactful as the novels and short stories she read that inspired her to become a writer.

“Hopefully [readers] can come away feeling moved, entertained and changed by the experience of reading my stories,” she said.