Lannan Foundation

Dinaw Mengestu, Writer - Marfa, Summer 2007

Dinaw Mengestu was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 1978. In 1980 he immigrated to the United States with his mother and sister, joining his father, who had fled the communist revolution in Ethiopia two years before.  A graduate of Georgetown University and of Columbia University’s MFA program in fiction, Mengestu has written for many publications. He recently reported stories for Harper’s and Jane magazine, profiling a young woman who was kidnapped and forced to become a soldier in the brutal war in Uganda, and for Rolling Stone on the tragedy in Darfur.  His first novel, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears (titled Children of the Revolution in Britain), has been nominated for The Guardian First Book Award in the U.K. and the Prix Femina Étranger in France, and earned him a place as one of the U.S. National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” for 2007. He is also the recipient of a 2006 fellowship in fiction from the New York Foundation for the Arts.

Rick Moody, Writer - Marfa, Winter 2003

Rick Moody is one of the most acclaimed American novelists of his generation.  His first novel, Garden State (1992), won the Pushcart Press Editor’s Choice Award. Two years later, he published The Ice Storm, which became an award-winning film directed by Ang Lee.

His other work includes the novel Purple America (1997); the story collections The Ring of Brightest Angels Around Heaven (1995) and Demonology (2001); an anthology of essays Joyful Noise: The New Testament Revisited (co-edited with Darcey Steinke, 1999); and the memoir The Black Veil (2002). 

Moody lives in Fishers Island, NY.

Jessica Moore, Writer - Marfa, Winter 2009

Jessica Moore is a writer, translator, and musician. She is currently at work on a collection of poetic pieces on love and grief (with the working title Everything, Now). This collection is inspired in part by her translation of Turkana Boy by Jean-Francois Beauchemin, and explores the resonance that can develop through the act of translating. She is the recipient of a 2008 PEN Translation award as well as the Claire Murray Fooshee and Joseph Howe awards for poetry. She performs original music in Toronto, where she makes her home.

Ibrahim Muhawi, Writer and Translator - Marfa, Summer 2004

Ibrahim Muhawi, renowned Palestinian social scientist, has translated numerous articles and books, most notably Mahmoud Darwish’s Memory for Forgetfulness.  He is coauthor and translator of Speak Bird, Speak Again: Palestinian Arab Folktales, and is currently translating a collection of stories by Zakaria Tamer, one of the Arab world’s greatest living writers.

He is a Visiting Professor of Folklore and Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley.

Naeem Murr, Writer - Marfa, Winter 2006

Naeem Murr’s first novel, The Boy, was a New York Times Notable Book of 1998, won a Lambda Literary Award, and was translated into six languages.  He is also the author of The Genius of the Sea, and The Perfect Man, forthcoming in England in April 2006, and in America early in 2007.  A recipient of numerous awards and scholarships for his writing, he has published a number of prize-winning stories, novellas and nonfiction pieces in literary journals.  Born and brought up in London, he has lived in America since his early twenties, and currently resides in Chicago.

Marilyn Nelson, Poet - Marfa, Winter 2009

Marilyn Nelson is the author or translator of twelve books and three chapbooks. Her books include The Fields of Praise: New and Selected Poems (1997), which won the 1998 Poets’ Prize and was a finalist for the 1998 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, the 1997 National Book Award, and the PEN Winship Award; Magnificat (1994); The Homeplace (1990), which won the 1992 Annisfield-Wolf Award and was a finalist for the 1991 National Book Award; Mama’s Promises (1985); and For the Body (1978).  Her honors include two NEA creative writing fellowships, the 1990 Connecticut Arts Award, an A.C.L.S. Contemplative Practices Fellowship, a Fulbright Teaching Fellowship, and a fellowship from the J.S. Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Nelson is a professor emeritus of English at the University of Connecticut; founder and director of Soul Mountain Retreat, a small writers’ colony; and was Poet Laureate of the State of Connecticut from 2001-2006.

Sigrid Nunez, Writer - Marfa, Fall 2002

Sigrid Nunez is the author of four novels: A Feather on the Breath of God, Naked Sleeper, Mitz: The Marmoset of Bloomsbury and For Rouenna.

She has been the recipient of several literary awards, including a Whiting Writer’s Award and two awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters: the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award and the Rome Prize in Literature. A Feather on the Breath of God was a finalist for the 1995 PEN/Hemingway Award for First Fiction.

Dennis O'Driscoll, Poet - Santa Fe, Winter 2001

Dennis O’Driscoll, one of Ireland’s most widely published and respected critics of poetry, was born in County Tipperary, Ireland. A civil servant since the age of 16, he works for Irish Customs in Dublin.
He has published six collections of poetry, the most recent being Exemplary Damages. He has contributed to the Times Literary Supplement, Poetry, and the Harvard Review.  O’Driscoll, who received a Lannan Literary Award for Poetry in 1999, was a featured author for Readings & Conversations in 2001 and 2003. 

Peter Orner, Writer - Marfa, Spring 2008

Peter Orner’s first book was Esther Stories (Houghton Mifflin, 2001) a well-received collection of 34 stories about which writer and critic Margot Livesay said in The New York Times, “Orner doesn’t simply bring his characters to life, he gives them souls.” His second book is the funny, brilliant, and lyrical novel, The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo (Little, Brown, 2006). Similar in construction to his story collection, some of the chapters are just a page, in the novel Orner offers an extraordinary cast of characters, including Mavala Shikongo, a former guerrilla, through whose past we learn the often violent history of Namibia. His work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, and Best American Stories . Orner has been awarded a Pushcart Prize, the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Lannan Literary Fellowship. Born in Chicago, he currently lives in San Francisco.

Simon Ortiz, Writer and Poet - Galisteo, Summer 2000

Poet, writer, and storyteller, Simon Ortiz’s books include Woven Stone, From Sand Creek, and After and Before the Lightning. In the late 1980’s, Mr. Ortiz held official tribal positions as Interpreter and First Lieutenant Governor of Acoma Pueblo, his native community in New Mexico.

As a major Native American writer he insists on telling the story of his people’s land, culture, and community, a story that has been marred by social, political, and economic conflicts with Euro-American society. Ortiz’s insistence, however, is upon a story that stresses vision and hope by creative struggle and resistance to human and technological oppression.