Roxane Gay, Teju Cole, and others on the 2018 Guggenheim Fellowships
The Board of Trustees of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has announced 173 (including two joints fellowships) recipients of the 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship. Winners range from scientists, scholars, artists, architects, designers, and from various stages of their careers.
Among recipients are: Roxane Gay, professor and author of the bestselling Bad Feminist; Teju Cole, novelist, photographer and photography critic of the New York Times Magazine; Charlie Hailey, architecture and planning scholar; Edward Dimendberg, professor of architecture and urbanism; Moon Duchin, mathematician and professor; Eliza Hittman, filmmaker and professor of film and video at Pratt Institute; Rania Matar, photographer; Aniruddh D. Patel, neuroscientist and professor; Anthony Hernandez, photographer.
Poets on this year’s Guggenheim include: Tyehimba Jess, professor of English, author of Olio and winner of 2017 Pulitzer Prize; Reginald Dwayne Betts, author of Bastards of the Reagan Era (Four Way Books, 2015) and winner of the 2016 PEN New England Award in Poetry; Amy Gerstler, professor and author of thirteen (13) books of poetry; Iliya Kaminsky, editor and translator and professor; Joan Naviyuk Kane, scholar and professor at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico; Dunya Mikhail, professor and author of The War Works Hard; Srikanth Reddy, professor and author of Voyager; Anya Krugovoy Silver, author of four (4) books of poetry and a professor of English at Mercer University; Monica Youn, author of three (3) books of poetry including Blackacre, winner of the 2017 William Carlos Williams Award.
Recipients were chosen out of almost three thousand (3000) entries.
Speaking about this year’s fellows, Edward Hirsch, poet, and president of the Foundation, said: “It’s exceptionally satisfying to name 175 new Guggenheim Fellows. These artists and writers, scholars and scientists, represent the best of the best. Each year since 1925, the Guggenheim Foundation has bet everything on the individual, and we’re thrilled to continue to do so with this wonderfully talented and diverse group. It’s an honor to be able to support these individuals to do the work they were meant to do.”
Established in 1925, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation was initiated by Simon Guggenheim and his wife, Olga, in honor of their son, John, who died in 1922. The foundation has offered grants worth over $360 million to individuals since its inception, and specifically aims to support artistic, literary, scientific, educational development.
An interesting story about this year’s Guggenheim: LA photographer, Anthony Hernandez, said he didn’t plan to apply for the Guggenheim Fellowship when the application opened last year, for obvious reason: he had applied many times and got that ‘sorry to inform you’ letter all those times. But his wife, a novelist, who has herself received the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1997, encouraged him to apply. He said okay, he applied and said “this is the last time”. And this year, he is among 173 recipients of the 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship. Anthony’s career has spanned five decades.
Among past Guggenheim fellows are: W. H. Auden, John Ashberry, Elizabeth Bishop, James Baldwin, E. E. Cummings, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Hass, Terrance Hayes, Lyn Hejinian, Gwendolyn Brooks, Rita Dove, Louise Glück, Natasha Trethewey.
