Word: silko
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Novelist Leslie Marmon Silko: $176,000 in 1981. Before receiving her award, Silko was an assistant professor of English at the University of Arizona. "I was sliding into despair. I might have thrown in the towel," she says. "Teaching just didn't give me the time I need for writing." Silko, who is a Laguna Pueblo Indian, now lives with her two sons on a small ranch in the Tucson Mountains. She has finished a screenplay, intended for public television, that is based on an Indian fable about an encounter with evil. She also reports "good progress...
...Silko's award means more to her than sustenance. "It released something," she says. "It has given me ideas. When you have the luxury of time, it changes something inside. You're a little less beholden to the everyday world. And I don't have to put up with teaching Mickey Mouse undergraduates any more...
Winners ranged from Poet and Novelist Robert Penn Warren, 76, to Caltech Physicist Stephen Wolfram, 21, who received his Ph.D. in physics at age 20. Others included Soviet Emigré Poet Joseph Brodsky, 41; American Indian Poet Leslie Marmon Silko, 33; and Bell Laboratories Scientist Douglas D. Osheroff, 35. Warren will receive the maximum $60,000 a year, while young Physicist Wolfram gets the minimum, $24,000. The reason for the difference is that annual fees to fellows are on a sliding scale, based on their age. An extra $800 is added to the stipend for each year...