Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Wilmington, N.C. - The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has awarded a fellowship to support artistic creation to Malena Morling, assistant professor of creative writing at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

The Guggenheim Fellowship is one of the most prestigious prizes awarded to artists, scholars and scientists. Guggenheim Fellows are appointed based on distinguished past achievement and exceptional promise for future accomplishment. The 189 winners for 2007 were selected from almost 2,800 applicants in 78 different fields, from the natural sciences to the creative arts. They will receive awards totaling $7.6 million.

"Guggenheim Fellowships have traditionally gone to older, more established artists, writers and scholars," said Philip Furia, chair of the Department of Creative Writing. "For Malena to win one at this early point in her career is stunning. We are fortunate to have her as a member of the UNC Wilmington creative writing faculty."

Morling will use her Guggenheim Fellowship to fund a year-long sabbatical from her teaching responsibilities and spend that time working on her third collection of poems.

"I am thrilled and extremely grateful for the Guggenheim Fellowship," she said. "It is a blessing to have this gift of time to write."

Morling was born in Stockholm and grew up in southern Sweden. She received an M.A. from New York University and an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa. She is the author of two books of poetry, Ocean Avenue, selected by Philip Levine for the New Issues Press Poetry Prize in 1998 and Astoria, published by Pittsburgh Press in 2006.

Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including the New York Times Book Review, New Republic, Washington Post Book World, Ploughshares, New England Review, Five Points and Double Take. In 1999, she was awarded the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award and, in 2004, she received the Lotos Club Foundation Prize.

She has also taught at New York University, the University of Montana, Syracuse University and the New School.

For more information on the Guggenheim Fellows, visit www.gf.org.

Media contacts:

Malena Morling, assistant professor of creative writing, 910.962.7841 or morlingm@uncw.edu

Dana Fischetti, manager of news and media relations, 910.962.7259 or fischettid@uncw.edu