Three prominent Black female authors — N.K. Jemisin, Jacqueline Woodson and Tressie McMillan Cottom — are among 21 winners of this year’s MacArthur Foundation “genius grants,” reports CNN, which explained that the winners will receive a $625,000 “no-strings-attached” award paid out over five years.
A speculative fiction writer, Jemisin, 48, won the Hugo Award for Best Novel from 2016 to 2018 for each book in her “Broken Earth” trilogy. Children’s and young adult author, Woodson, 57, has published nearly 30 works featuring the experiences of Black people, thus broadening representation within the genre. Essay writer Cottom, 43, is an associate professor at the University of North Carolina School of Information and Library Science; her book of essays, “Thick,” as well as her popular Twitter account and podcast with Roxanne Gay, explores issues facing Black womanhood in the U.S. and was National Book Award finalist.
The full list of the 2020 winners can be found here.