Jones, Hemon, and Wright Named "Genius" Fellows

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation recently announced that fiction writers Edward P. Jones and Aleksandar Hemon and poet C.D. Wright are among 23 recipients of this year's $500,000 "genius" fellowships.

The winners will receive five annual installments of $100,000. The fellowships are given in a variety of fields to "enable recipients to exercise their own creative instincts for the benefit of human society."

Jones's most recent book is The Known World (HarperCollins, 2003), won this year's Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Hemon's second book, Nowhere Man, was published by Nan A. Talese/Doubleday in 2002.

Wright's most recent project is a collaboration with photographer Deborah Luster entitled One Big Self: Prisoners of Louisiana, an excerpt of which can be seen on the Poetry Society of America's Web site.