Barbara Hamby of English wins Guggenheim Fellowship

Barbara Hamby, writer-in-residence in the Department of English, has won a 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship for her poetry.

“Barbara won the Guggenheim for her work as a poet, but she is as good a fiction writer as anyone who’s won for their prose,” said Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Olen Butler, himself a Guggenheim Fellow in 1993 and currently Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English at Florida State. “Her book of stories is downright stunning.”

Hamby has had an extraordinary year, also winning a Florida State Distinguished University Scholar Award and the Iowa Short Fiction Award. In addition, five of her poems are to be included in Best American Poetry 2010, due for publication in September.

With the Guggenheim money, Hamby plans to write. "Now I will have acres of time to work, which is the main thing,” Hamby said. “I love to write and I have lots of projects lined up, including fiction, nonfiction and poetry.”

Each year, between 3,500-4,000 people apply for the Guggenheim, while only about 220 people win. Hamby’s husband, Professor David Kirby, won a Guggenheim in 2003, making Hamby and Kirby only the second husband and wife to win poetry fellowships in the history of the award, according to a list on the Guggenheim Foundation website. To read more, go to http://www.fsu.edu/news/2010/04/14/hamby.guggenheim/