Adam Haslett ’03 Awarded the 2016 Strauss Living

New York (January 20, 2016)—The American Academy of Arts and Letters has announced that writer Adam Haslett ‘03 and Jesmyn Ward will each receive the Academy’s prestigious Strauss Living of $200,000. Awarded for literary excellence, the Livings provide for a $100,000 annual distribution to each writer for a period of two years, the intent being to provide them the freedom to devote time exclusively to writing. Recipients of the Livings agree to forgo positions of paid employment during the award’s two-year term.

Haslett and Ward were selected by a committee of members of the Academy: Ann Beattie, Don DeLillo, Allan Gurganus and Joy Williams. The jurors read the works of an extensive list of writers who were nominated by the 250 members of the Academy. On behalf of her fellow jurors, Joy Williams commented,

“Jesmyn Ward’s work, profoundly engaging and necessary, possesses great strength and a dire beauty. Adam Haslett’s presciently political and freshly emotional acumen in his stories and novels is impressive. This is an important award for two wonderful important writers.”

Funded through a bequest by Harold and Mildred Strauss, the Livings were established in 1983 to benefit two writers of English prose literature. Harold Strauss, who died in 1975, was the editor-in-chief of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. for many years. He is best known for publishing the early works of John Steinbeck and for introducing important Japanese writers to Wester readers. Previous holders of the Livings were Cynthia Ozick and Raymond Carver (in 1983), Diane Johnson and Robert Stone (in 1988), John Casey and Joy Williams (in 1993), Marilynne Robinson and W.D. Wetherell (in 1988), Gish Jen and Claire Messud (in 2003) and Madison Smartt Bell and William T. Vollmann (in 2008).

Adam Haslett
Adam Haslett was born in Rye, New York in 1970. He was educated at Swarthmore College, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and Yale Law School (2003). Haslett is the author of the story collection You Are Not a Stranger Here (2003), and the novels Union Atlantic (2010), and Imagine Me Gone (2016). Haslett has written for many publications, including the Financial Times, Der Speigel, Esquire, The Nation, The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, and New York Magazine. His short stories have been included in O’Henry Prize Stories and Best American Short Stories.

Mr. Haslett’s honors have included the Berlin Prize, the PEN/Malamud Award, the Lambda Literary Award for Union Atlantic, and Rockefeller Foundation and Guggenheim fellowships. His Your Are Not a Stranger Here was a Pulitzer Prize and National Book award finalist. His work has been translated into eighteen languages. He has taught at Columbia University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Mr. Haslett resides in New York City.

Upon learning of his award, Haslett responded, “I’m deeply grateful to have received this remarkable award from the American Academy, and particularly honored to have been given it by a committee of four writers whom I could not admire more. Their vote of confidence and the Academy’s support is a great boon to my work and life as a writer.”

The Academy
The American Academy of Arts and Letters was established in 1898 to “foster, assist, and sustain an interest in literature, music, and the fine arts.” Election to the Academy is one of the highest formal recognitions of artistic merit in this country, and current members are 250 of America’s leading voices in Art, Architecture, Literature, and Music Composition. Each year the Academy gives over 60 awards, and present exhibitions of art, architecture, manuscripts, and readings of new musicals. It is located in three landmark buildings on Audobon Terrace in New York City.

Photo by Beowulf Sheehan