Meet the 22 artists, scientists and authors who will each get $800,000 MacArthur genius grants

A political scientist who studies what helps people connect across differences. A novelist whose books about Native American communities in Oakland, California, sparked a passionate following. A photographer whose black and white images investigate poverty in America.

Hahrie Han, Tommy Orange and Matt Black are among the 22 fellows selected this year by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and announced Wednesday. It’s a recognition often called the “genius award,” which comes with an $800,000 prize, paid over five years that fellows can spend however they choose.

The foundation selects fellows over the course of years, considering a vast range of recommendations, largely from their peers.

“Each class doesn’t have a theme and we’re not creating a cohort around a certain idea,” said Marlies Carruth, director of the MacArthur Fellows program. “But I think this year, we see empathy and deep engagement with community figures prominently in this class.”

Through different methodologies, many of the fellows “boldly and unflinchingly” reflect what they see and hear from deep engagement with their communities, she said.

Because fellows don’t apply or participate in anyway in their selection, the award often comes as a shock and sometimes coincides with difficult moments. Nabarun Dasgupta, an epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina, had just left a team meeting where he shared that a longtime collaborator in harm reduction work had died when he saw multiple missed calls from a Chicago number, which then called again. It was the MacArthur Foundation.

They were awarding him the fellowship in recognition of his work, which includes helping to start a testing program for street drugs to identify unregulated substances and helping to overcome a shortage of naloxone, which reverses an opioid overdose.

To make sense of the intense moment that mixed deep loss and recognition, Dasgupta wrote the following in a journal.

“We are surrounded by death every day. Sometimes, you have to give yourself a pep talk to get out of bed. Other mornings, the universe yells in your ear and tells you to keep going because what we’re doing is working.”

In an interview with The Associated Press, he added, “I feel like this couldn’t have been any clearer of a signal that the work has to go on.”

Other fellows were contacted by the foundation through email asking to speak with them about potential projects. Tonika Lewis Johnson, a Chicago-based artist, planned to take the call in the car. The foundation representatives tried to get her to pull over before breaking the news, but she declined.

“They were definitely worried about my safety,” she said laughing, and she did then stop driving.

Johnson’s projects are rooted in her neighborhood of Englewood, located on Chicago’s South Side. She has photographed the same addresses in north and south Chicago, beautified residents’ homes and made predatory housing practices visible. All together, her work reveals the very specific people and places impacted by racial segregation.

“This award is validation and recognition that my neighborhood, this little Black neighborhood in Chicago that everyone gets told to, ‘Don’t go to because it’s dangerous,’ this award means there are geniuses here,” Johnson said.

For Ángel F. Adames Corraliza, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the award is also a recognition of the talent and grit coming from Puerto Rico, where he is from, despite the hardships his community has endured. His research has uncovered many new findings about what drives weather patterns in the tropics, which may eventually help improve forecasting in those regions.

Adames said usually one of his classes would be ending right when the foundation would publish the new class of fellows, so he was planning to end the lecture early to come back to his office. He said he’s having trouble fathoming what it will be like.

“I am low-key expecting that a few people are just going to show up in my office, like right at 11:02 a.m. or something like that,” he said.

Before getting news of the award, Adames said he was anticipating having to scale down his research in the coming years as government funding for climate and weather research has been significantly cut back or changed. He said he had been questioning what was next for his career.

The prize from MacArthur may allow him to pursue some new theoretical ideas that are harder to get funded, he said.

“I think people do care and it does matter for the general public, regardless of what the political landscape is, which right now is fairly negative on this,” he said about climate and weather science.

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