Congratulations! Kimmerer and Lanham Among the MacArthur Fellows Announced Today
We were thrilled to learn that two of our favorite nature writers—J. Drew Lanham and Robin Wall Kimmerer—are among the 25 individuals named MacArthur Fellows today. The “no strings” awards were given to “exceptionally creative people who push the boundaries of their fields and challenge us to imagine new possibilities.”
“The 2022 MacArthur Fellows are architects of new modes of activism, artistic practice, and citizen science. They are excavators uncovering what has been overlooked, undervalued, or poorly understood. They are archivists reminding us of what should survive.” —Marlies Carruth, Director, MacArthur Fellows
We’ve loved the writing Lanham and Kimmerer have brought to readers; they’re both adept at combining cultural and personal responses to their scientific work and observations of nature.
Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teaching of Plants will be included in our Winter 2022-2023 issue of Nature Book Guide, scheduled for release around December 1. Braiding Sweetgrass was published by Milkweed Editions in 2015.
J. Drew Lanham’s The Home Place was included in our inaugural Autumn 2022 issue of Nature Book Guide. It was published by Milkweed Editions in 2017. Lanham wrote this on his Instagram post today:
Sharing joy unbound today, y'all! Not just my regular wild joy -- but holler -cry - bellylaugh - tears -in-my-eyes, shout- to- the- sky , soar-and-fly, jubilation! This is a full on flocking of joy! A joy murmuration ! A joygasm! Why so much joy?
I'm a 2022 MacArthur Fellow!
You've probably heard it called the "Genius Grant", but It's not an award for genius. There is, however, the genius of unfettered generosity in its disbursement to stoke the creative fires of unique potentials at pivotal points in Fellows' careers.
In other words someone has assessed our work and found it worthy enough to invest in what might come beyond it with significant investment. I am happiest to somehow have met MacArthur muster and be among a class of kindred creative spirits working each in his/her/their own way to make a different kind of difference! For me this is beyond any dream I've ever been bold enough to imagine. Yes, a friend or two have suggested it and even in the mentioning of such a distant possibility I've been honored, even as I've summarily dismissed it as improbable as the powerball lottery I never play. But then it happened! I've been gifted time and resources to be me. To dream. To write. To wander. To watch. To provoke. To ponder. To create. To just be. All with no strings attached. No progress reports other than poems I might write to no particular publishing end. No "deliverables" due other than myself into wildness. No overhead to account for except the musings about migrating birds above. So yes, it's like an intellectual lottery in some ways, but then more accurately it's creative liberation and self-determined capacity all rolled into one wonderful thing. I'm grateful, humbled, excited and a bit overwhelmed in it all. So please forgive me if I'm a bit slow to respond in the coming days (weeks, months, years), while I'm learning on the fly how to navigate this new joy frontier. It sometimes takes a minute to learn how newfound wings work. I'm so thankful for this validation and opportunity. I'm deeply grateful to the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for "seeing" me.