|
 Jena Osman, Associate Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing, has received a prestigious Pew Fellowship in the Arts for 2006. One of several cultural initiatives funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts, the Pew Fellowships in the Arts grant $50,000 to Philadelphia-area artists and are the largest such grants in the country for which artists can apply. This year's twelve awards were selected from among nearly 300 applicants and went to artists working in the areas of Poetry, Performance Art, and Sculpture and Installation.
Osman teaches contemporary poetry and poetics in the Temple English department. Her books of poetry include An Essay in Asterisks (Roof, 2004) and The Character (Beacon, 1999 and winner of the 1998 Barnard New Women Poets Prize). Her work has appeared in The Best American Poetry of 2002 (selected by Robert Creeley), and many other anthologies and literary magazines such as Conjunctions, XCP: Cross Cultural Poetics, and Verse. With Juliana Spahr, Osman is the editor of the award-winning and internationally recognized literary magazine Chain. She has received grants for her poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Fund for Poetry. She has been a writing fellow at the MacDowell Colony, the Blue Mountain Center, the Djerassi Foundation, and Chateau de la Napoule. Her work “Target” was used as the libretto for a piece by composer Keeril Makan, and was performed at the Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall in 2004.
The Pew Fellowships are for a minimum of one year and a maximum of two years. They support artists at any stage of career development, from early to mature, and working in a wide variety of aesthetics and traditions. For the recipients, this major honor reflects both their distinction within the discipline-specific pool and the collective judgment of the final, interdisciplinary panel.
Director Melissa Franklin of the Pew Fellowships noted: “This year’s fellowship recipients reflect the diversity and creative energy that make Philadelphia’s artists community one of the most exciting in the country. Our support of these gifted individuals will be rewarded manyfold in the contributions they make to the cultural life of this community and in the variety of artistic experiences they bring to the broader Philadelphia public.”
|
