Midd Briefs English Professor Cohen Awarded Guggenheim Fellowship

Author: Andrea Gissing

Associate Professor of English Robert Cohen was one of 184 artists, writers, scholars and scientists who were awarded a 2003 Guggenheim Fellowship by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation this year.
Cohen is a an award-winning novelist who teaches courses in creative writing as well as in modern literature. Cohen has been a member of the faculty at Middlebury College since 1997. He has written three novels, which are entitled, "The Organ Builder," "The Here and Now" and "Inspired Sleep." He is also the author of a collection of short fiction, entitled "The Varieties of Romantic Experience." For his writings he has received such awards as a Whiting Writers' Award, a Lila Wallace Writers' Award and a Pushcart Prize.
Cohen is currently a resident of Middlebury. He has also taught at Harvard University, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, the Middlebury College Bread Loaf Writers' Conference as well as the Master of Fine Arts Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.
According to a College press release, the recipients of the fellowship were selected because they displayed "distinguished achievement in the past and exceptional promise for future accomplishment."
The 184 recipients were collectively awarded a total of $6,750,000. They represented just less than six percent of the total applicant pool, which included 3,282 people.
Cohen's Fellowship is designed to go towards a new novel that he is writing.
The last memeber of the Middlebury College faculty to be awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship was D. E. Axinn Professor of Creative Writing and Professor of English Jay Parini. Parini was awarded the Fellowship in 1993.