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Alumna Receives Prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship

April 10, 2014

Alumna Receives Prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship

Claire Vaye Watkins, a 2011 graduate of the Ohio State M.F.A. program in creative writing, has just been awarded a 2014 Fellowship by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. According to the foundation, such fellowships are designed to assist research and artistic creation and "are intended for men and women who have already demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Having received the 2013 Dylan Thomas Prize for Battleborn, her debut collection of stories, as well as The Story Prize and the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award, Watkins certainly fits this bill. In addition to these awards, Watkins has received fellowships from the Writers’ Conferences at Sewanee and Bread Loaf, and her stories and essays have appeared in Granta, One Story, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, Best of the West 2011, and Best of the Soutwest 2013

Currently, Watkins is a visiting assistant professor at Princeton University as well as the co-director, with Derek Palacio, of the Mojave School, a free creative writing workshop for teenagers in rural Nevada. The Department of English congratulates Watkins on her remarkable achievements and looks forward to hearing much more about her work in the coming years!

For more information about Watkins, click here