The Board of Trustees of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation announced today their appointment of the 101st class of Guggenheim Fellows, with Workshop alumni, Lucy Ives (MFA '05), Bret Anthony Johnston (MFA '02), and Suji Kwock Kim (MFA '97), among the 223 distinguished individuals.

As established in 1925 by founder Senator Simon Guggenheim, each Fellow, chosen based on both prior career achievement and exceptional promise, from a pool of nearly 5,000 applicants working across 55 disciplines, receives a monetary stipend to pursue independent work at the highest level under “the freest possible conditions.” Ives and Johnston were selected in the category of Fiction, and Kim in the category of Poetry. To see the full list of the 2026 Fellows, please visit www.gf.org. 

“Our new class of Guggenheim Fellows is representative of the world’s best thinkers, innovators, and creators in art, science, and scholarship,” said Edward Hirsch, award-winning poet and President of the Guggenheim Foundation. 

“As the Foundation enters its second century and looks to the future, I feel confident that this new class of 223 individuals will do bold and inspiring work, undaunted by the challenges ahead. We are honored to support their visionary contributions.” 

Since its founding in 1925, the Guggenheim Foundation has awarded nearly $450 million in fellowships to more than 19,000 Fellows. In all, 55 scholarly disciplines and artistic fields, 97 academic institutions, 33 US states and the District of Columbia, three Canadian provinces, and eight countries beyond the United States and Canada are represented in the 2026 class. They explore the promise and perils of artificial intelligence, propose life-changing advancements in medical technology, unearth the historical roots of contemporary crises, and forge new directions in artistic expression.