Karen Russell, Young Novelist, Wins $500,000 MacArthur Grant!

Karen Russell, who visited us in Feb. 2011, is among the 2013 winners of a half a million dollar MacArthur Fellowship (announced today).

From the MacArthur website:  "Karen Russell is a fiction writer whose haunting yet comic tales blend fantastical elements with psychological realism and classic themes of transformation and redemption. Setting much of her work in the Everglades of her native Florida, she depicts in lyrical, energetic prose an enchanting and forbidding landscape and delves into subcultures rarely encountered in contemporary American literature."

See more at:  http://www.macfound.org/fellows/902/

More about Russell's visit to Albany with Julie Orringer:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/orringer_russell11.html

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Junot Diaz Wins MacArthur "Genius" Award

Junot Diaz, who visits Albany Thursday, has just been awarded a $100,000 no-strings-attached MacArthur Foundation grant.

From the L. A. Times:

On Monday, news of who would be named the 2012 MacArthur Fellows leaked out early in reports by the Associated Press and elsewhere. Two writers are among the 23 artists, scientists and thinkers on the list: Junot Diaz and Dinaw Mengestu.

Diaz is the author of, most recently, the short story collection "This Is How You Lose Her," published in September. Mengestu's most recent work is the 2010 novel "How to Read the Air." Both are published by Riverhead.

Each author will receive a no-strings-attached "genius grant" of $500,000. All MacArthur Fellows are awarded $100,000 a year for five years.

More:  http://www.latimes.com/features/books/jacketcopy/la-jc-macarthur-genius-junot-diaz-dinaw-mengestu-20121001,0,2594121.story

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