Claire Messud ’83, an author and visiting writer at Amherst College, has been awarded a fellowship by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

The 2002 Fellowship winners include more than 184 artists, scholars and scientists selected from more than 2,800 applicants for awards totaling more than $6.75 million. The average award given to individual recipients is $37,000.

Claire is the author of three novels, The Last Life, When the World Was Steady, a finalist for the 1996 PEN/Faulkner Award, and The Hunters.

She has published short fiction in Granta and in Zoetrope/All Story. She has written articles and reviews for such publications as the New York Times, the Washington Post, the London Times and the Times Literary Supplement.

Prior to teaching fiction at Amherst, Claire taught in the MFA program at Warren Wilson College in North Carolina, in the Graduate Writing Program at Johns Hopkins, and spent time as a writer-in-residence at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee.

Since 1925, the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has granted more than $200 million in fellowships to nearly 15,000 individuals. Past fellows include Ansel Adams, Aaron Copland, Langston Hughes, Henry Kissinger, Linus Pauling and Martha Graham.

The Guggenheim Foundation fellowships further the development of scholars and artists by assisting them to engage in research and creation, under the freest possible conditions. The fellowships are awarded to men and women who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the Arts; appointments are made for one year.