Daniel Raeburn, a lecturer in the Committee on Creative Writing, has received a 2010 Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Raeburn said he plans to use the $25,000 fellowship to write a memoir about his experiences as a father. "Now I'm free to pursue something more personal, less financially rewarding but more artistically rewarding," he said.
The fellowships are meant to help provide writers with extra time and resources to produce new work, according to the NEA. This year, 42 prose writers were chosen from among more than 900 applicants to receive fellowships. Past recipients include Junot Diaz, Richard Ford, Tracy Kidder, E. Annie Proulx and Jane Smiley.
"We are supporting projects that have great works of art at the heart of them; that work to inspire and transport audiences and visitors; and that create and retain opportunities for artists and arts workers to be a part of this country's real economy," NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman said in a statement.
Raeburn began teaching at the University of Chicago in 2006. He is the author of Chris Ware (2004), and has published essays in the New Yorker, the Baffler and Tin House. He received his bachelor's degree from the University of Iowa in 1991 and his master's from Bennington College in 2006.
To celebrate the NEA honor, Raeburn said he went to the Seminary Co-op "and bought myself $200 worth of books that I have wanted for a long time."
-Susie Allen
