Murray named Guggenheim Fellow

Award-winning fiction writer Sabina Murray, an assistant professor of English, has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for 2007. She is one of 189 artists, scholars and scientists from the United States and Canada selected for the award by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Guggenheim Fellows are appointed on the basis of distinguished achievement in the past and exceptional promise for the future. Selected from a field of more than 2,800 applicants, this year’s fellows will share about $7.6 million in grants from the foundation.

Murray, who teaches in MFA Program for Poets and Writers, said she plans to use the grant to research and write a novel and for travel.

Her latest novel, “Forgery,” is being released this spring by Grove/Atlantic, Inc. Her previous novels are “A Carnivore’s Inquiry,” “Slow Burn” and “The Caprices,” which received the 2003 PEN/Faulkner Award. She also wrote the screenplay for the 2004 film, “The Beautiful Country.” Her stories have appeared in Ploughshares, Ontario Review, New England Review and other magazines.

Murray joined the faculty in 2003 after serving as writer-in-residence at Phillips Andover Academy.

She was a Bunting Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University and a Michener Fellow at the University of Texas.

Murray received her B.A. in art history from Mount Holyoke College in 1989 and her M.A. in English and creative writing from the University of Texas in 1994.

Murray will read from her work on Thursday, April 19 at 8 p.m. in Memorial Hall as part of the Visiting Writers Series.

April 12, 2007.

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