Photo courtesy of the MacArthur Foundation
Performance Studies Alum Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (M.A. '07) was awarded a 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship in Drama and Performance Art.
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins is a Brooklyn-based writer and theatre artist. His plays include “Girls" (Yale Rep), "Everybody” (Signature Theatre; Pulitzer Prize-finalist), “War” (LCT3/Lincoln Center Theater), “Gloria” (Vineyard Theatre; Pulitzer Prize-finalist), “Appropriate” (Signature Theatre; Obie Award), “An Octoroon” (Soho Rep; Obie Award) and “Neighbors” (The Public Theater). A Residency Five playwright at the Signature Theatre as well as a 2020 USA Artists Fellow, his recent honors include the Charles Wintour Award, the MacArthur fellowship, the Windham-Campbell Prize, the Benjamin Danks Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Steinberg Playwriting Award, and the inaugural Tennessee Williams Award. Having taught at New York University, the Juilliard School, and Hunter College, where he was director of the MFA playwriting program, he now serves on the faculty at University of Texas at Austin.
The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation announced its 2020 Fellowship recipients on April 8, 2020. Appointed on the basis of prior achievement and exceptional promise, the successful candidates were chosen from a group of almost 3,000 applicants in the Foundation’s ninety-sixth competition.