By IANS
New York : Five Indian Americans have been selected for the prestigious Guggenheim fellowship for 2008, an award programme that assists research and artistic creation.
Poet Meena Alexander, writer Tony D’Souza, historian Sumit Guha, mathematician Chandrashekhar B. Khare and political scientist Ashutosh Varshney are among the 190 fellows announced April 3.
They were selected from 2,600 applicants on the basis of their stellar achievement and exceptional promise for continued accomplishments. The 190 fellows would be disbursed grants according to their need, totalling $8.2 million, by the New York-based John Simon Guggenhiem Memorial Foundation.
Allahabad-born Alexander’s collections of poetry includes “Quickly Changing River” (2008) and “Raw Silk” (2004). The New Yorker is also known for her autobiography “Fault Lines”. She is a distinguished professor of English at Hunter College and the City University of New York, Graduate Centre.
D’Souza, 32-year-old Chicagoan, released “The Konkans”, a novel, two months ago. His first novel “Whiteman” (2007) received the prestigious Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Guha, professor of history at Rutgers University, is the author of several books including the well-known “Environment and Ethnicity in India: 1200-1991” and “Health and Population in South Asia from Earliest Times to the Present”.
Khare, professor at the University of California, helped crack a mathematical puzzle – Serre’s conjecture – which gave him instant recognition.
Varshney, teaching political science at the University of Michigan, has written the much acclaimed “Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India”, which gave a fresh insight into communal riots in India.
Pulitzer Prize winning writer Jhumpa Lahiri and mathematician-author Manil Suri are among the previous Indian American recipients of the Guggenheim award.