Professor David Yezzi has been awarded a 2025 Guggenheim Fellowship. From the Guggenheim Foundation’s announcement: “The Board of Trustees of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation announced their appointment of the 100th class of Guggenheim Fellows, including 198 distinguished individuals working across 53 disciplines. Chosen through a rigorous application and peer review process from a pool of nearly 3,500 applicants, the Class of 2025 Guggenheim Fellows was tapped based on both prior career achievement and exceptional promise. As established in 1925 by founder Senator Simon Guggenheim, each Fellow receives a monetary stipend to pursue independent work at the highest level under ‘the freest possible conditions.'”
“‘At a time when intellectual life is under attack, the Guggenheim Fellowship celebrates a century of support for the lives and work of visionary scientists, scholars, writers, and artists,’ said Edward Hirsch, award-winning poet and President of the Guggenheim Foundation. ‘We believe that these creative thinkers can take on the challenges we all face today and guide our society towards a better and more hopeful future.'” You can read the full press release and list of 2025 Guggenheim Fellows here.
Since 1925, the Guggenheim Foundation has granted over $400 million in fellowships. Past Fellows include Nobel laureates and winners of the Pulitzer Prize, Fields Medal, Turing Award, Bancroft Prize, and National Book Award. Among other recipients of this year’s fellowships are Writing Seminars alum Richie Hofmann (poetry) and fellow JHU professor Martha S. Jones (U.S. history).
David Yezzi’s latest books are More Things in Heaven: New and Selected Poems (Measure Press) and Late Romance: Anthony Hecht—A Poet’s Life (St. Martin’s Press). His verse play Schnauzer, produced by The Baltimore Poets Theater, was published by Exot Books, and his libretto for David Conte’s opera Firebird Motel, available on CD from Arsis, has been widely performed. A former director of the Unterberg Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y in New York, he is a member of the acting company at Chesapeake Shakespeare Company.
