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April 12, 2008
Meena Alexander
Wins Guggenheim
Fellowship
Distinguished
Professor of
English Meena
Alexander, an
award-winning
poet and
novelist who
teaches in the
MFA program at
Hunter, has been
named a 2008
Guggenheim
Fellow.
Alexander –
whose most
recent book of
poetry, Quickly
Changing River,
was published in
January -says
she will use the
prestigious
award to write a
new book of
poems retracing
her journeys as
a child when she
traveled by
steamer across
the Indian Ocean
from her native
India to Sudan.
“I am thrilled
to bits to have
won a
Guggenheim,”
Alexander said.
“I have a whole
book of poetry
coiled inside,
waiting to be
written, and now
I feel I can
give it a real
shot. My
project is a
book of poems
retracing the
map of my
migrant life,
overlaying the
travels I went
through as a
child. Now from
New York I will
make these
journeys in life
and in art.”
Also awarded a
Guggenheim
Fellowship was
Hunter adjunct
Vicky Shick, a
New York City
choreographer
who has taught
in the College’s
Dance Program
for the past
eight years.
As a Guggenheim
fellow, she will
pursue a new
dance project
she is very
excited about.
“I will be
working with
dancers from New
York and
Budapest,
setting a piece
in both cities
in January and
March 2009,”
Shick said. “I
am
extraordinarily
lucky to have
been awarded
this Guggenheim
Fellowship,
which will
support this
project and
allow me to work
here in New York
City and in my
hometown,
Budapest.”
The Guggenheim
fellowships are
awarded each
year to a select
group of
artists,
scientists and
scholars who
have exceptional
records of past
achievement and
also show
extraordinary
promise for
future great
accomplishments
with their work.
From Hunter
College News
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