Author and RCDS alumnus Dr. Joshua Bennett has received the distinguished Guggenheim Fellowship for 2021 in the American Literature category. Dr. Bennett, who is the Mellon Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College, is one of 184 writers, scholars, artists, and scientists who were selected from nearly 3,000 applicants. Guggenheim Fellowships are awarded to individuals who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts.

Dr. Bennett was also one of ten 2021 Whiting Award recipients, which are given annually to emerging writers in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama. He received the award for poetry and nonfiction.

Dr. Bennett is the author of The Sobbing School (Penguin, 2016), Being Property Once Myself (Harvard University Press, 2020), Owed (Penguin, 2020), and Spoken Word: A Cultural History (Knopf, forthcoming). His work has been published in The New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, and Poetry, among others.

After graduating from Rye Country Day School in 2006, Dr. Bennett completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania and then went on to receive an M.A. in Theatre and Performance Studies from the University of Warwick, where he was a Marshall Scholar. Dr. Bennett holds a Ph.D. in English from Princeton University. He is currently a member of the Rye Country Day Alumni Executive Board.

Congratulations, Dr. Bennett!