Kwame Dawes, professor of English and Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner, has received a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. He is among 181 scholars, artists and scientists in the United States and Canada who were selected for the honor from nearly 3,000 applicants.
The fellowship will support his work on the poem cycle, “August: A Quintet,” which is based on the work of August Wilson, an American playwright and Pulitzer Prize winner whose work illustrated the African-American experience in the 20th century.
Dawes called the award a tremendous honor, adding that he’s grateful to all the writers who wrote in support of his selection.
“I have long regarded the Guggenheim Fellowship as a clear indication of the quality and significance of the work of American artists and artists from around the world. I waited until I thought I had a fit project before applying, and I am glad I did,” he said.
He’s especially grateful because the fellowship acknowledges the importance of the work it will support, he said.
Dawes joined the UNL faculty as a Chancellor’s Professor in 2011 and took the helm of the Prairie Schooner, UNL’s quarterly literary magazine that for the past 85 years has published the fiction, poetry, essays and reviews of talented writers of all levels. He is the author of 16 poetry collections, three works of fiction, and several anthologies, produced plays, and books of literary criticism and aesthetics, not counting forthcoming works. His long list of accomplishments includes a 2009 Emmy Award for a multimedia documentary project on HIV/AIDS in Jamaica.
Guggenheim Fellows are appointed based on distinguished achievement in the past and exceptional promise for future accomplishment. What distinguishes the Guggenheim Fellowship program from others is the wide range in interest, age, geography, and institutions of those it selects. The 2012 fellows come from 54 disciplines and 77 different academic institutions.
Since its establishment in 1925, the Foundation has granted fellowships to more than 17,300 individuals. Scores of Nobel, Pulitzer and other prizewinners appear on the rolls of the Foundation’s fellows. Among them are Ansel Adams, Aaron Copland, Langston Hughes, Henry Kissinger, Vladimir Nabokov, Isamu Noguchi, Linus Pauling, Paul Samuelson, Martha Graham, Philip Roth, Derek Walcott, James Watson, and Eudora Welty.
Dawes will join other 2012 fellows at a reception next month in New York to accept his award.
- Jean Ortiz Jones