Award-winning poet and Professor of Creative Writing Ilya Kaminsky has been named a 2023 USA Fellow by the United States Artists organization. Kaminksy was selected among 45 artist fellows recognized as “the country’s most compelling artists and cultural practitioners.”
In its mission statement, United States Artists affirms a strong belief “in artists and their essential role in our society.” Awarded annually, USA Fellowships are given in the following disciplines: Architecture & Design, Craft, Dance, Film, Media, Music, Theater & Performance, Traditional Arts, Visual Art, and Writing. This roster of 2023 fellows, who are practicing artists at all stages of their careers and hail from 19 states along with Guam and Puerto Rico, goes through a rigorous nomination and panel selection process. Each fellowship includes a $50,000 unrestricted cash award which artists can decide to use in whatever ways best support their lives.
“This year, we are proud to award forty-five fellowships to this incredible group of artists and cultural practitioners whose interdisciplinary, community-centered work demonstrates the power of our country’s art ecosystems to advance equity and offer new paths forward,” commented Ed Henry, United States Artists Board Chair, in making the announcement.
Photo courtesy Ilya Kaminsky
Kaminsky joined the creative writing faculty at Princeton in January. He is the author of Deaf Republic and Dancing in Odessa and co-editor and co-translator of many other books, including Ecco Anthology of International Poetry and Dark Elderberry Branch: Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva. Published in 2019 by Graywolf Press, Deaf Republic was The New York Times’ Notable Book for 2019 and was also named Best Book of 2019 by dozens of other publications. Kaminsky’s work has won The Los Angeles Times Book Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the National Jewish Book Award, the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Whiting Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Metcalf Award, Lannan Fellowship, Academy of American Poets’ Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and Poetry Magazine‘s Levinson Prize. His work has been shortlisted for the National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, Neustadt International Literature Prize and the T.S. Eliot Prize (UK). His poems have been translated into over 20 languages, and his books have been published in many countries, including Turkey, Iceland, the Netherlands, Germany, Russia, France, Mexico, Macedonia, Romania, Spain, and China, where his poetry was awarded the Yinchuan International Poetry Prize. Kaminsky was selected by BBC as “one of the 12 artists that changed the world.”
This spring, Kaminsky will teach undergraduate poetry workshops for the Program in Creative Writing.
Listed with Kaminksy among this year’s fellows is actor and writer Eisa Davis, a recent visiting guest artist in the Princeton Atelier. Professor of Creative Writing Aleksandar Hemon is a past recipient of a USA Fellowship, along with Princeton alums Lex Brown ’12 and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins ’06, Lewis Center for the Arts lecturers Raphael Xavier and RaMell Ross, and several past Hodder Fellows.
View the online gallery of fellows including biographies and work samples from each artist. To learn more about USA Fellows, read or download the official press release (PDF).
