Professor Awarded Guggenheim Fellowship

Richard Jackson, UC Foundation Professor of English at UTC, has won a Guggenheim Fellowship for his writing and translating from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. The Guggenheim Fellowship is one of the most prestigious awards a writer can receive.

The award is based upon Jackson’s previous accomplishments and awards and is intended to support various creative projects and to provide travel assistance.

In May 2000 Jackson was awarded the Order of Freedom medal by the President of Slovenia for his literary and humanitarian work in the Balkans. The medal is the highest award given to civilians.

He has also been a Fulbright Exchange poet to former Yugoslavia and is a past winner of NEA and NEH Fellowships. He has won four prestigious Pushcart Prizes, a Prairie Schooner Magazine Reader's Choice Award, a Crazy Horse Magazine Award, Cleveland State Poetry prize, Alabama Poetry Prize, the Agee Award, and a Choice Selection. In addition, his poems have been featured on the internet in Poetry Daily and Verse Daily.

Jackson is the author of 5 award winning books of poems including the 2000 Juniper Prize-winning book, Heartwall, three chapbooks of translations, two award-winning books of criticism, and two anthologies. His poems have been translated into over a dozen languages. His several dozen essays appear in most of the major journals and anthologies. He is the editor of Poetry Miscellany, Mala Revija and an eastern European book series. His New and Selected Poems is due out next spring.

Jackson has lectured and read his work at dozens of American universities and in Europe. This past summer he lectured and read at the University of Iowa, the American Library Association meeting, Vermont College, the University Of Ljubljana, and the Prague Workshops, and will lecture at Salem College in Winston-Salem next month. He also lectured and chaired a panel at the International P.E.N. Conference in Slovenia in May.

At UTC Jackson teaches creative writing and the Freshman Honors Seminar and is a member of the Council of Scholars. He directs the internationally renowned Meacham Writers Workshops each fall and spring. He also directs the Eastern European Exchange through which he takes creative writing students to Europe each May. He has won several teaching awards at UTC and at Vermont College's writers program.