Join our editorial board by applying here or become a columnist at the Spectator by clicking here.
CU Creative Writing Professor Wins Arts and Letters Award
PUBLISHED APRIL 7, 2008
Ben Marcus, associate professor and chair of the creative writing program at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, was awarded this year’s American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Morton Dauwen Zabel Award. The $10,000 award is granted biennially to a writer of fiction, poetry, or criticism who displays progressive, original, and experimental tendencies in his or her work.
Marcus, who came to Columbia in 2000 after teaching at Brown, teaches fiction workshops and seminars at the graduate school. He also offers undergraduate courses at the college. He is the author of Notable American Women: A Novel, as well as a book of short stories and a collaborative book with an artist.
Marcus is currently working on a second novel and said he will likely use the money from the award to support his writing during his sabbatical next year. “It’s always great to get an award that helps devote your time to writing,” he said.
Marcus’ upcoming novel will explore how linguistic change affects cultural and global change. It is a theme he said he finds particularly fascinating—and one he touched upon in his first novel, Notable American Women, because according to him, “Without language we really are nothing.”
The award will be presented on May 21, 2008, at a ceremony at the Academy of Arts and Letters in Manhattan.
Article Tools:
Post new comment