awards

N.K. Jemisin Awarded One of 21 MacArthur ‘Genius’ Grants This Year

Photo: Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for ReedPOP

Gather ‘round, brains big and small. The MacArthur Foundation has announced its new class of “geniuses.” Author of the Broken Earth trilogy N.K. Jemisin is one of this year’s 21 winners of the famed “genius” grant. The award, $625,000 distributed over five years, no-strings-attached, is given to 21 MacArthur fellows honored for “exceptional creativity” in their fields. It’s not technically for being “geniuses,” but the name stuck and we were going to feel intellectually inferior anyway. The minds on this year’s list includes three-time Hugo Award winner (and the first African American woman to win it) N.K. Jemisin, playwright Larissa FastHorse, artist Ralph Lemon, children’s book author Jacqueline Woodson, documentary filmmaker Nanfu Wang, writer Cristina Rivera Garza, and Cécile McLorin Salvant, a singer, composer, and the youngest fellow at 31. Congrats to these hardworking individuals and don’t forget to treat yourselves — you’re geniuses, not saints.

N.K. Jemisin Awarded One of 21 MacArthur ‘Genius’ Grants