USF Writer Earns Literature Fellowship

Susan Steinberg, associate professor of English, has been named the winner of a United States Artists (USA) Ziporyn Fellowship in literature for 2010.

Steinberg, the author of the short story collection Hydroplane (2006) and the only fiction writer to receive a USA fellowship for 2010, was recognized in a ceremony at New York City’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in December. Presented to 50 artists annually, a USA fellowship comes with an unrestricted $50,000 purse.

“I’m thrilled!” said Steinberg, who was anonymously nominated and then asked by USA to apply to the judging process.

USA – launched in 2005 with funding from the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Prudential Foundation, and the Rasmuson Foundation – funds individual artists who often lose out to donors’ contributions to museums, theaters, or arts center renovations.

“In an era saturated with information, when people are besieged by the 24-hour news cycle, when social networking takes up more of our time, when attention deficit disorder seems not so much a malady but a common condition – how much more essential then is that intimate compact between writer and reader, between playwright and audience? United States Artists is helping artists to sustain and re-forge that compact,” said Maureen N. McLane, a 2010 USA judge and New York University associate professors of English.

Steinberg plans to use the USA fellowship award to work on a new writing project and, hopefully, travel.