Fellowships : Biography Fellows 2011-2012
The Leon Levy Center for Biography at the CUNY Graduate Center is pleased to announce its 2011-2012 Biography Fellows. Each fellow will receive a generous grant, writing space, and library privileges, and they will be participating in the public events at the Graduate Center and the Leon Levy Center.
The 2011-2012 Biography Fellows are: Adam Begley, former books editor of The New York Observer, who is working on a biography of John Updike, to be published by HarperCollins; Madison Smartt Bell, Professor of English at Goucher College, who is writing the first English-language biography of Jean Jacques Dessalines, a leader of the Haitian Revolution; Elizabeth Kendall, professor at the Eugene Lang College of the New School, for a biography of George Balanchine and the ballerina Lidiia Ivanova, who died suspiciously in 1924; and D.T. Max, a staff writer at The New Yorker, who is working on a biography of David Foster Wallace to be published by Viking Press.
Adam Begley
Adam Begley, for many years the books editor of The New York Observer, is the author, with Ed Sorel, of Certitude: A Profusely Illustrated Guide to Blockheads and Bullheads, Past and Present; and with Laura Miller he edited The Salon.com Reader's Guide to Contemporary Authors. In the 1990s he was a frequent contributor to The New York Times Magazine; Mirabella, where he wrote a monthly book column; and Lingua Franca, where he was a contributing editor. He is currently a Guggenheim Fellow.
Madison Smartt Bell
Madison Smartt Bell is the author of some twenty books, including All Souls' Rising, Devil's Dream, Toussaint L'ouverture: A Biography, and (most recently) The Color of Night. He is a Professor of English at Goucher College and co-founder of Goucher's undergraduate creative writing program. In 2008 he was a recipient of a Strauss Living from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Elizabeth Kendall
Elizabeth Kendall is the author of two cultural histories (Where She Danced, the Birth of American Art Dance, and The Runaway Bride: Hollywood Romantic Comedy of the 1930s) and two memoirs (American Daughter and Autobiography of a Wardrobe). She is a professor at The New School's Eugene Lang College and its Liberal Studies Program, and a contributing editor for Dance Magazine.
D.T. Max
D.T. Max is a staff writer for The New Yorker. His previous book, The Family That Couldn't Sleep, was a scientific and cultural study of prion diseases, published in 2006.