From a pool of almost three thousand applicants, 180 artists, scientists, and scholars—including more than thirty writers—received some good news from Edward Hirsch yesterday. The president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation announced the recipients of the 2009 Guggenheim Fellowships, each worth around forty thousand dollars. 

The fellows in poetry are Saskia Hamilton, Joseph Harrison, Terrance Hayes, Lyn Hejinian, Laura Kasischke, Barbara Ras, Lisa Russ Spaar, Larissa Szporluk, and Daniel Tobin.

The fellows in fiction are Chris Abani, Chris Adrian, Stacey D'Erasmo, Ellen Feldman, John Haskell, Ken Kalfus, Marshall N. Klimasewiski, Richard Lange, Zachary Lazar, Fae Myenne Ng, and George Singleton.

The other creative arts categories were drama, biography, general nonfiction, photography, fine arts, film, music composition, choreography, and video and audio.

Since its establishment in 1925, the foundation has awarded more than $273 million to nearly 16,700 individuals, including poets W. H. Auden, Langson Hughes, and Derek Walcott and fiction writers Vladimir Nabokov, Philip Roth, and Eudora Welty.

Below are videos of three of the new fellows—Terrance Hayes, John Haskell, and Chris Abani—reading and discussing their work.