Ever since the Swedes gave Obama the Nobel Prize before he’d actually done anything, I’ve wondered what goes on behind the closed doors of the secret chambers where they bestow such honors.
And never more than now, with the MacArthur Foundation’s baffling decision to deem 43-year-old fiction writer Junot Díaz a “Genius” worthy of the Read More
The MacArthur geniuses have been announced. Here’s how we read the list: scientist, scientist, scientist, long-form journalist and New Yorker contributor Peter Hessler! Scientist, scientist, that Radiolab guy! Read More
A few days after being deservedly dubbed a “genius,” newly minted Macarthur Fellow Yiyun Li, whose recent short story collection, Gold Boy, Emerald Girl, has been excerpted in the New Yorker (she’s one of the much-envied 20 under 40), told a gathering at the Asian American Writers Workshop on West 27th Read More
When David Simon first learned that he won the MacArthur “genius” Grant — which comes with $500,000 tax-free, no-strings-attached, paid out in quarterly installments over five years — his first thought was to give the money to charity. He doesn’t need it. “To be blunt, I’m in the entertainment industry … and my contracts are Read More
