Browsing the list of Guggenheim Fellowships in an ad taken out by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation I noticed quite a few Brooklynites in the crowd. The Guggenheim's are a coveted award given out every year to artists, scholars and scientist in all fields. This year they granted 180 fellowships picked from a list generated from hundreds of recommendations from panels and juries. The trustees of the Guggenheim Foundation include Robert A. Caro, Joyce Carol Oates, Edward Hirsch and Ellen Taafe Zwilich.
And the Brooklyn winners are:
John Haskell for fiction
Joann Malinowska, fine arts
Stefanie Snider, fine arts
Julia Loktev, film
Thomas L. Bradshaw, drama and performance
Jordan Harrison, drama and performance
Anne Wasburn, drama and performance
Heather Hendershot, film, video and radio studies
John Haskell is an amazing writer. Get his book of stories, “I Am Not Jackson Pollack,” without delay.
I’ve also seen some Joann Malinowska’s installations at an art gallery, and she’s very talented.
BTW, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich spells her maiden name with two A’s and two F’s. In addition to being a fabulous composer, she is one of the nicest people around. I met her in June 1980 at the MacDowell Colony and we had lots of talks late at night. I had bad insomnia and so did she, because her husband had recently died. I was so excited when she won the Pulitzer Prize shortly afterward. Her work afterwards has been just amazingly versatile.