The annual MacArthur “Genius” Fellows have been named. This award gives people from diverse fields $500,000 with “no strings attached,” for “exceptional creativity, as demonstrated through a track record of significant achievement, and manifest promise for important future advances.” There are typically a handful of literary types among the scientists, artists, and musicians who become Fellows. This year, by my count, there are three.
Stuart Dybek, as a highly regarded short story writer and novelist, is the best-known among them. When most people think of Dybek, they think of Chicago, where much of his writing is set. He’s also the writer in residence at nearby Northwestern University. I haven’t read any Dybek, but when I do, I’ll likely start with The Coast of Chicago or I Sailed with Magellan.
Peter Cole is co-founder and co-editor of Ibis Editions, “a small press and non-profit organization founded in Jerusalem in 1998 and dedicated to the publication of Levant-related books of poetry and belletristic prose. The press publishes translations from Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, French, and the other languages of the region. New writing is published, though special attention is paid to overlooked works from the recent and distant past.” Among Cole’s more recent efforts is The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain, 950-1492
Lynn Nottage is a Brooklyn-based playwright. According to the Hartford Courant, “Nottage is developing a workshop production at Chicago’s Goodman Theater of ‘Ruined,’ set in a mining town in the Congo rainforest. She recently workshopped another new play for the Roundabout Theatre Company in New York, an adaptation of slave narratives for the stage. She is also working on a children’s musical ‘Sweet Billy and the Zulus’ for the Philadelphia-based touring company, Colored Girl Productions.” Her most recently published plays are Intimate Apparel and Fabulation.
