On April 8th, 2021, the Board of Trustees of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation approved the awarding for Guggenheim Fellowships to a diverse group of 184 artists, writers, scholars, and scientists. These exceptional candidates were chosen through a rigorous peer-review process from almost 3,000 applicants.
Created in 1925 by Senator Simon and Olga Guggenheim in memory of their son John Simon Guggenheim, the Foundation has offered fellowships to exceptional individuals in pursuit of scholarship in any field of knowledge and creation in any art form, under the freest possible conditions.
“I am thrilled to announce this new group of Guggenheim Fellows,” said Edward Hirsch, President of the Foundation, “especially since this has been a devastating year in so many ways. A Guggenheim Fellowship has always been meaningful, but this year we know it will be a lifeline for many of the new Fellows at a time of great hardship, a survival tool as well as a creative one. The work supported by the Fellowship will help us understand more deeply what we are enduring individually and collectively, and it is an honor for the Foundation to help the Fellows do what they were meant to do.”
Among the 2021 Fellows are the following Civitellians:
Laura van den Berg (CRF 2018) and Tayari Jones (Incoming Writing Fellow 2023) in Fiction.
Alexander Chee (CRF 2011) in General Nonfiction.
Mark Wunderlich (CRF 2014, DG 2016) in Poetry.
Ashkan Behzadi (Incoming Music Fellow 2021), Zosha Di Castri (Juror), Sky Macklay (CRF 2019), Miya Masaoka (Incoming Music Fellow 2021), Advisory Council Member James Siena (DG 2011), and Nina C. Young (CRF 2019) in Music Composition.
Congratulations to all! View the full list of 2021 Fellows here.