Nyack Resident Wins Guggenheim Fellowship

Ross Benjamin of Nyack is among the 175 scholars, artists and scientists to be awarded a 2015 Fellowship by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation

Appointed on the basis of prior achievement and exceptional promise, the successful candidates were chosen from a group of over 3,100 applicants.

“It’s exciting to name 175 new Guggenheim Fellows,“ said Edward Hirsch, president of the Foundation, in a prepared statement. “These artists and writers, scholars and scientists, represent the best of the best. Since 1925, the Guggenheim Foundation has always bet everything on the individual, and we’re thrilled to continue the tradition with this wonderfully talented and diverse group. It’s an honor to be able to support these individuals to do the work they were meant to do.”

Local Fellowship winners:

• Ross Benjamin, Translator, Nyack: English Translation of Franz Kafka’s Complete Diaries
• Amy Bennett, Artist, Cold Spring: Fine Arts
• Mary Beth Keane, Writer, Pearl River: Fiction
• Tess Lewis, Translator, Bronxville: Translation of Ludwig Hohl’s Notizen (Notes)

Guggenheim Fellowships are grants to selected individuals made for a minimum of six months and a maximum of twelve months. Since the purpose of the Guggenheim Fellowship program is to help provide Fellows with blocks of time in which they can work with as much creative freedom as possible, grants are made freely. No special conditions attach to them, and Fellows may spend their grant funds in any manner they deem necessary to their work.