"But it turns out the Oakland writer had been keeping the intel quiet for about a month already after Chris Lovely, senior program officer at the MacArthur Foundation, pranked him when delivering the good news. She'd set up a call asking for his input on another person she said was a fellowship candidate. Then, when he got on the call, she flipped the script and told him he'd been selected. It was all kind of a blur, he said in an interview."
"The win is a high-profile acknowledgment of the significance of Orange's work, which spotlights stories of urban Indigenous people who are rarely represented in popular culture. He is the author of the award-winning novels There There (Knopf, 2018) and Wandering Stars (Knopf, 2024), books set largely in Oakland that tell stories of contemporary Native American characters and the ways that trauma is transmitted across generations."
"He is working on a new novel called The Pretendians (Knopf), and had been on the verge of taking a university teaching job that would've taken him away from writing, he said. But with the fellowship funds, he can instead focus on his writing which he feels a strong sense of urgency to produce, given the looming AI situation, as he described it."
Tommy Orange won a MacArthur Fellowship, an $800,000 no-strings-attached award. He had been informed privately after a prank by Chris Lovely, who disguised the call as seeking his input on another candidate before revealing his selection. Orange's novels spotlight urban Indigenous people and examine how trauma is transmitted across generations, with works set largely in Oakland such as There There (2018) and Wandering Stars (2024). Enrolled in the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes, he grew up in Oakland and graduated from the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. The fellowship will allow him to focus on a new novel, The Pretendians, rather than take a teaching job.
Read at www.mercurynews.com
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