The Janet Weis Fellow in Contemporary Letters
The Janet Weis Fellow in Contemporary Letters honors and recognizes individuals who represent the highest level of achievement in the craft of writing within the realms of fiction, non-fiction or biography. The award is presented every two years. Until 2011, it was presented annually.
The Weis Fellowship was established in 2002 through a grant from the Degenstein Foundation in honor of Janet Weis, an author, civic leader and philanthropist as well as trustee emerita of the University. Her husband, Sigfried Weis, was chair of the Bucknell Board of Trustees from 1982 to 1988.
The 14th Janet Weis Fellow, Colson Whitehead
Colson Whitehead is the No. 1 New York Times bestselling author of 11 works of fiction and nonfiction. He received the Pulitzer Prize for The Nickel Boys and The Underground Railroad, which also was honored with the National Book Award and the Carnegie Medal for Fiction. He became the second writer of color and the sixth writer ever to win both a National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize for the same novel.
After graduating from Harvard in 1991, Whitehead became a writer for The Village Voice. His reviews, essays and fiction writing have appeared in numerous publications, including The New York Times, The New Yorker and New York Magazine. In 2019, he was featured on the cover of Time magazine, which described him as "America's Storyteller."
Whitehead is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writers Award, the Dos Passos Prize and a fellowship at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. In 2020, the Library of Congress awarded him its Prize for American Fiction. In 2021 he was awarded the National Humanities Medal, which he received from President Biden in March 2023.
Whitehead has taught at the University of Houston, Columbia University, Brooklyn College, Hunter College, New York University, Princeton University and Wesleyan University. He has also been a writer-in-residence at Vassar College, the University of Richmond and the University of Wyoming.
Whitehead appeared in person to accept the Weis fellowship and deliver a keynote address on Monday, Sept. 9, 2024 in the Weis Center for the Performing Arts.
Previous Recipients
- Peter Balakian (2017)
- Elizabeth Kolbert (2015)
- Rita Dove (2013)
- Robert A. Caro (2011)
- Edward Albee (2010)
- John Edgar Wideman (2009)
- David McCullough (2008)
- Derek Walcott (2007)
- Joyce Carol Oates (2006)
- Tom Wolfe (2005)
- Salman Rushdie (2004)
- John Updike (2003)
- Toni Morrison (2002)