Meet the 2017 MacArthur 'geniuses'


One is an artist and geographer who has photographed some of the most top-secret locations on Earth. Another is a psychologist who explored if a radio soap opera could reduce prejudice in Rwanda. Yet another had planned to be a concert pianist before turning to science to understand how antibodies become more effective at fighting off pathogens. Together, they compose three of the 24 MacArthur fellows for 2017, a group of "exceptionally creative people" who have been awarded a no-strings-attached grant of $625,000, doled out over the next five years, to do with as they see fit.
"I had fantasized about that moment ever since I knew it existed," one of the recipients, Rhiannon Giddens, told The New York Times of winning the grant. Giddens' accomplishments include being the first woman and nonwhite banjoist to win a major prize.
Jason De León, an anthropologist who studies undocumented crossings of the U.S.-Mexico border, described himself as wearing "a lot of different hats," adding that "most of my career has been defined by making it up as I go along."
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Other recipients include writers like the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Annie Baker and another Pulitzer Prize winner, novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen. Jesmyn Ward — the author of Salvage the Bones and, most recently, Sing, Unburied, Sing — was awarded for "exploring the enduring bonds of community and familial love among poor African Americans of the rural South against a landscape of circumscribed possibilities and lost potential."
Read more about the recipients, and see the full list, at the MacArthur Foundation and The New York Times.
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Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.
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