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Previous Stellfox Recipients

Stellfox Award-winner Lorrie Moore speaks with literature and writing students in Memorial Hall.

Stellfox Award-winner Lorrie Moore speaks with literature and writing students in Memorial Hall.

2022-23: Ada Limon

Poet Laureate of the United States

Limón is the author of six books of poetry, including The Carrying, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, and Bright Dead Things, which was nominated for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Limón is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Chicago Literary Award for Poetry. She is also the host of the critically acclaimed poetry podcast The Slowdown. Limón was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship in 2020, and two years later she was named the 24th poet laureate of the United States.

2020-21: Natasha Trethewey, Wu Ming, Greg Rucka and Cully Hamner

Former Poet Laureate, Italian Writing Collective and Award-winning Comic-book creators

Because of health concerns regarding an in-person residency, Dickinson did not bestow a Stellfox Award in 2022. Instead, the Stellfox program made it possible for several honorees to interact with students virtually and deliver virtual public events during the spring semester. 

Former poet laureate Natasha Trethewey is the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, the Mississippi Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, and fellowships by the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations and by Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute, among other honors. Wu Ming ("no name," in Chinese), is a collective of Italian writers who publish about media, communication, politics, identity and convergence theory. Greg Rucka is a multiple-award-winning comic-book creator and writer, a screenwriter and a novelist, best known for his GLAAD Media Award-winning, culturally diverse superhero work for DC Comics and his multi-genre work for independent presses. Cully Hamner is a comic-book creator and artist best known for his culturally diverse superhero work for DC Comics, including his work as co-creator of DC’s first Latinx superhero, Blue Beetle; and for his creator-owned comic-book series RED, which was adapted into a star-studded feature film. 

2019-20: Roberto Saviano

Saviano is known for his breakout work, Gomorrah, an exposé of organized crime in Naples, Italy. Since its publication in 2006, Saviano has been living under armed guard to counter the death threats he faces from the Neapolitan Mafia. He continues his fight against crime through his books, public lectures, articles and television appearances.

2018-18: Boubacar Boris Diop (2018-19)

Award-winning Novelist and Journalist

Born in Dakar, Boubacar Boris Diop is a prolific, award-winning Senegalese novelist and journalist. He is widely recognized as one of the most artistically and philosophically serious writers of his generation, with works that are characterized by exploration and reflection on the postcolonial condition in Africa. His 2000 novel Murambi: the Book of Bones has been called “a miracle” by Toni Morrison and was featured on the Zimbabwe International Book Fair’s list of the 100 best African books of the twentieth century. In 2004 and 2008, Diop was a visiting professor at Rutgers University. After having taught Wolof language and literature at Gaston Berger University in Senegal, he is currently Professor of Literature and Creative writing at the American University of Nigeria. His last published novel is Bàmmeelu Kocc Baarma (A Grave for Kocc Barma).

2017-18: Naomi Shahib Nye

Voertman Poetry Prize-winning poet

Known for lending fresh perspective to ordinary events, Naomi Shihab Nye is a leading American poet. Her 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East (2002) and You and Yours (2005) explore poetic responses to 9/11. Other works include the Voertman Poetry Prize-winning Hugging the Jukebox (1982), Fuel (1998) and Transfer (2011). Nye, whose Palestinian heritage informs her American perspective, also writes essays, children's fiction and translations. 

2016-17: John Patrick Shanley

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and screenwriter

John Patrick Shanley is the playwright of "Doubt," a 2005 Broadway production inspired by a relative's experience with a priest who was convicted of child molestation. The play won four Tony awards, a Drama Desk award and the Pulitzer Prize.Shanley also is a screenwriter and director of the 2008 film adaptation of Doubt, starring Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman. His other screenplays include the 1987 film Moonstruck (Cher, Nicholas Cage), which won three Academy Awards, including best screenplay. Recent works, including "Outside Mullingar" and "The Prodigal Son," also have received critical acclaim.

2015-16 - Edwidge Danticat

National Book Award-winning author and MacArthur fellow

MacArthur Fellow and Stellfox Award-winner Edwidge Danticat is the author of several books, includingBreath, Eyes, Memory, an Oprah Book Club selection; Krik? Krak!, a National Book Award finalist; and Brother, I’m Dying, a 2007 finalist for the National Book Award and 2008 winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography. Her most recent books include Mama’s Nightingale, a picture book, and Untwine, a young-adult novel. 

2014-2015 - Lorrie Moore

Short-story author, essayist and recipient of the Irish Times International Prize for Literature

Known for humorous, poignant and unsparing short stories, Lorrie Moore is the recipient of the Irish Times International Prize for Literature, a Lannan Foundation fellowship, the PEN/Malamud Award and the Rea Award. Moore's fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The New Yorker, Harperʼs, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, The Paris Review, The Yale Review and Best American Short Stories. Her most recent novel was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner and the Orange Prize.

Moore is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and has taught at Cornell University, the University of Michigan, New York University, Princeton University and Baruch College and, for 29 years, at the University of Wisconsin. She is currently Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor at Vanderbilt University. She grew up in upstate New York and received her B.A. from St. Lawrence in 1978.

2014 - Paul Muldoon

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet

Muldoon's residency was punctuated by a lecture and award ceremony, a theatrical production and two major musical performances. Each related to Muldoon's life and work and/or to that of the poet's longtime friend and mentor, Seamus Heaney, who was named the 2013-14 Stellfox recipient before his sudden death last fall. 

2012 - David Henry Hwang

Tony Award-winning playwright

2011 - Richard Russo

Pulitzer Prize-winning author (April)

2011 - Margaret Atwood

Booker Prize winning author (November)

2009 - Maxine Kumin

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet

2008 - Mario Vargas Llosa

Novelist, playwright, essayist, journalist, literary critic and 2010 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature.

2007 - Edward Albee

Three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright

2006 - Rita Dove

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet

2005 - Ian McEwan

Booker Award-winning British novelist