The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation named yesterday the winners of its 2011 fellowships for writers in the United States and Canada. The writers receiving awards, which last year averaged $36,867, are most in the middle stages of their careers, with two or more books published. Award amounts vary based on a writers' individual budget requests.
The fellows are, in poetry:
Peter Campion
Claudia Emerson
Paul Guest
Kimberly Johnson
Eleanor Lerman
Maurice Manning
Bill Porter (translation)
D. A. Powell
A. E. Stallings
Matthew Zapruder
Cynthia Zarin
In fiction:
Bonnie Jo Campbell
Jonathan Dee
Christie Hodgen
Clancy Martin
Valerie Martin
Karen
Russell
David Vann
Lara Vapnyar
Brad Watson
In creative nonfiction:
Eula Biss
Mary Cappello
John D’Agata
Rosemary Mahoney
Katherine Russell Rich
Patricia Volk
In the video below, fiction fellow Lara Vapnyar, who emigrated from Moscow in the early nineties, describes her experience as a writer in America.