English professor Johnson wins Guggenheim Fellowship

Rice’s Lacy Johnson has won a prestigious 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship, one of a talented group of 175 writers, scholars, artists and scientists recognized for their exceptional work by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Rice professor Lacy Johnson won a 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship in the field of general nonfiction.

Johnson, an assistant professor of English, is the founder of the Houston Flood Museum and the author of two memoirs. Her recently published book of essays on the nature of justice, “The Reckonings,” was named a finalist in the criticism category for National Book Critics Circle Award.

The highly competitive Guggenheim Fellowship is awarded annually to “further the development of scholars and artists by assisting them to engage in research in any field of knowledge and creation in any of the arts, under the freest possible conditions and irrespective of race, color or creed.”

Since its establishment in 1925, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has granted more than $375 million to over 18,000 advanced professionals in mid-career, including Nobel laureates, Pulitzer Prize winners, National Book Award winners and Turing Award winners. The amount of each grant varies.

This year’s cohort of Guggenheim Fellows is drawn from 53 scholarly disciplines and artistic fields and 78 different academic institutions, chosen from over 3,000 applications.

Joining Johnson in the 2020 group of fellows are writers Celeste Ng, author of “Little Fires Everywhere” (recently adapted for television by Hulu), and leading climate change journalist Jeff Goodell. Other fellows come from a wide variety of backgrounds: astrophysicists, anthropologists, architects, artists and African studies scholars among them.

Past Rice Guggenheim Fellowship winners include Earth scientist Cin-Ty Lee in 2017, computer scientist Krishna Palem in 2015 and computer scientist Luay Nakhleh in 2012.