“My project for this coming year is twofold. First, I'll be completing work on my second collection of poems, Every Last Thing. Many of the pieces in this manuscript focus on icons of Americana, and meditate on the temporality and insularity of joy, our means of navigating between bliss and grief, and the ability and failure of language to convey these extremities of emotion. In addition, I'll be developing a book-length series of lyric essays, many of which employ Japanese Haikus as vehicles for meditation on far-flung topics culled from history, art, poetry, and personal narrative.”
Current
Rome Prize Fellows and Projects
The American Academy in Rome awards the Rome Prize to a select group of artists and scholars, after an application process that begins in the fall of each year. The winners, announced in the spring, are invited to Rome to pursue their work in an atmosphere conducive to intellectual and artistic freedom, interdisciplinary exchange, and innovation. The 2011-12 Rome Prize winners are listed here with a brief project summary in their own words.
To download the brochure from the Rome Prize Ceremony held in New York on 13 April, 2011, announcing the 2011-2012 Rome Prize winners click here.
Literature
John Guare Writer’s Fund Rome Prize, a gift of Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman
Suzanne Rivecca
Writer, Jamaica Plain, MA
The Habitants: A Novel of Walt Whitman in New Orleans
“This is a historical novel about 29-year-old Walt Whitman's experiences with his 15-year-old brother, Jeff, in New Orleans in 1848. It explores the personal and artistic revelations that shaped the pre-Leaves of Grass Whitman when he worked as a reporter for the New Orleans Daily Crescent.”
