Simone White, Assistant Professor of English, and Marc Anthony Richardson, lecturer in Creative Writing, have been chosen for a 2021 Creative Capital Award and will each receive as much as $50,000 in funding for their creative writing projects.

Dr. White and Mr. Richardson are among 42 artists working on 35 projects to receive the award, “each of which exemplifies the risk-taking, adventurous art-making” Creative Capital says it seeks to sustain.

Creative Capital is a New York City-based nonprofit founded in 1999 to support innovative artists, “providing infusions of funding at key moments in an artist’s project,” with a particular eye toward “forward-thinking and boundary-blurring work,” according to the organization.

“The Creative Capital Award is one of the most prestigious honors for creative practitioners around, and unique in that it focuses on the exceptional promise of a project, not just on past accomplishments of the artist,” said Julia Bloch, Director of Penn’s Creative Writing Program. “The new projects that the Creative Capital grants will nourish will be incredible and vibrant contributions to our literary landscape. “It’s so exciting whenever the faculty who mentor Penn undergrad creative writers show what can be achieved.”