Lannan Foundation

Forrest Gander, Poet - Marfa, Spring 2005

Born in the Mojave Desert in Barstow, California, and raised in Virginia, Forrest Gander is the author of five books of poetry, including Torn Awake and Science & Steepleflower.  Gander also writes literary criticism (The Nation, Boston Book Review, The Providence Journal, et al) and translates. His most recent translations are No Shelter: The Selected Poems of Pura López-Colomé and, with Kent Johnson, Immanent Visitor: Selected Poems of Jaime Saenz.

Richard Grant, Writer - Marfa, Fall 2001

Richard Grant, an Englishman based in Tucson, Arizona, is a freelance writer with 12 years experience in magazine journalism. He is currently working on his first book, a study of nomadism and wandering in North America, drawing on personal experience with nomadic subcultures such as rodeo cowboys, truck drivers, tramps, hobos, traveling vendors, festival-goers and retirees in motor homes.

He has written for many publications including The Independent Magazine, The Telegraph, British Esquire, Los Angeles Magazine, Details and The Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine.

Allan Gurganus, Writer - Marfa, Fall 2005

Allan Gurganus, the novelist and short-story writer, was born in Rocky Mount, N.C., in 1947.  He is the author of the highly-acclaimed novel Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All, the collection of stories and novellas White People, and the novel Plays Well with Others. His latest work, The Practical Heart: Four Novellas, won the Lambda Literary Award. Called “the rightful heir to Faulkner and Welty,” he returned from Manhattan to live in his native North Carolina where he currently teaches at Duke and co-founded Writers Against Jesse Helms. His political editorials often appear in The New York Times.  Gurganus’ next novel, second in The Falls Trilogy that commenced with Widow, is The Erotic History of a Southern Baptist Church.

Andrea Higgins, Artist - Santa Fe, Winter 2000

Andrea Higgins is a painter working in San Francisco. She received her B.A. from Dartmouth College in 1992. While an undergraduate, Ms. Higgins spent a semester at the New York Studio School and was chosen for the Yale/Norfolk Summer School of Art.

In 1993 she began attending the graduate program for painting at the San Francisco Art Institute and received her M.F.A. in 1995. Following the completion of her M.F.A., Ms. Higgins spent a year in Denspasar, Bali teaching painting.

She has won several fellowships and grants, which include the Luce Scholars Program Grant, the P.O.D. Studio Art Award from Dartmouth College, and the Ellen Battell Stoeckel Fellowship from Yale University. Her work has been shown primarily in the San Francisco Bay Area.

During her residency Ms. Higgins continued working on a series of precisely crafted paintings based on fabric patterns.

Lewis Hyde, Writer - Marfa, Winter 2002

Lewis Hyde, Luce Professor of Art and Politics at Kenyon College, is the author of Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth and Art, an exploration of the “trickster” character who appears in the myths and traditional stories of many cultures.

He also has written, edited, and translated several books, including This Error is the Sign of Love; Alcohol and Poetry: John Berryman and the Booze Talking; On the Work of Allen Ginsberg; and The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property.

Gish Jen, Writer - Marfa, Fall 2003

Gish Jen has published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, The Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times, among other periodicals, as well as in numerous textbooks and anthologies, including The Best American Short Stories of the Century, edited by John Updike.

Jen has received grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the Fulbright Program, and the National Endowment for the Arts, and currently holds a Strauss Living from The American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1999 she was awarded the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction.

She has published three novels. Her first book, Typical American (Houghton Mifflin, 1991), was a finalist for the National Book Critics’ Circle Award. Its sequel, Mona in the Promised Land (Knopf, 1996), was named one of the ten best books of 1996 by The Los Angeles Times. Her third novel is called The Love Wife. A story collection, Who’s Irish?, was published by Knopf in 1999.  All of her books have been New York Times notable books.

Simone Aaberg Kaern, Artist - Santa Fe, Fall 2000

Simone Kaern was born in 1969 in Cophenhagen, Denmark. Her solo exhibitions include Sisters in the Sky, Project Room, ARCO, Madrid, Spain, 2000; Air, Kunstakademiets kunstforening, Copenhagen, Denmark, 1995; wanna fly, SAGA Basement, Copenhagen, Denmark, 1995.

Her group exhibitions include dAPERTutto: 48th International Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy, 1999, and Nordic Nomads, White Columns, New York, 1998.

While in residence, Ms. Kaern, a pilot as well as an artist, worked on a project based on the idea of unassisted human flight.

Dana Levin, Poet - Marfa, Spring 2001

Dana Levin grew up in the Mojave Desert in California and attended Pitzer College and the Graduate Creative Writing Program at New York University. Her first book, In the Surgical Theatre, was chosen by Louise Glück for the 1999 American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Prize.

Levin’s honors include the 2000 Witter Bynner Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the 2000 GLCA New Writers Award, a 1999 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and a 1998 Pushcart Prize.

“I arrived with a mess, and left with a book.”

Yiyun Li, Writer - Marfa, Winter 2006

Yiyun Li grew up in Beijing and came to the United States in 1996. Her stories and essays have been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, and elsewhere.  Named by The Los Angeles Times as one of the three authors to watch in 2005, her first book, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, has won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award.  Her other awards include the Plimpton Prize from The Paris Review for the short story “Immortality,” and a Pushcart prize.  She lives in Oakland, California, with her husband and their two sons, and teaches in the MFA program at Mills College.

Barry Lopez, Poet - Galisteo, Summer 1999

Mr. Lopez’s books include the nonfiction works Arctic Dreams, which won the National Book Award, Of Wolves and Men, and Crossing Open Ground; and the fiction collections Winter Count, Desert Notes, and Field Notes.

Asked to consider the role of the writer, Mr. Lopez has said, “I like to use the word isumatug. It’s of eastern Arctic Eskimo dialect and refers to the storyteller, meaning ‘the person who creates the atmosphere in which wisdom reveals itself.’ I think that’s the writer’s job. It’s not to be brilliant, or to be the person who always knows, but… to be the one who recognizes the patterns that remind us of our obligations and our dreams.”

The recipient of a Lannan Literary Award in Nonfiction, the American Book Award, and the John Burroughs Medal, among other honors, Mr. Lopez lives in rural Oregon. His residency lasted from August 20 to September 10, 1999.