April 24, 2003

Contact: Sarah Ray

802-443-5794

sray@middlebury.edu

Posted: April 24,

2003

MIDDLEBURY,

VT - The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has announced

that Middlebury College Associate Professor of English Robert Cohen has

been awarded a 2003 Guggenheim Fellowship to work on a new novel.

This year the foundation awarded a total of $6,750,000 to 184 writers,

scholars, artists and scientists, slightly less than six percent of the

3,282 applicants. According to the foundation, Guggenheim Fellows are

appointed on the basis of distinguished achievement in the past and exceptional

promise for future accomplishment.

Cohen, a resident of Middlebury, has taught creative writing and modern

literature courses at the College since l997. He is the author of three

novels, “The Organ Builder,” “The Here and Now,”

and “Inspired Sleep,” as well as a collection of short fiction,

“The Varieties of Romantic Experience.” His work has received

a number of awards, including a Whiting Writers’ Award, a Lila Wallace

Writers’ Award, and a Pushcart Prize. Cohen has also taught at Harvard

University, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the Middlebury College Bread

Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the MFA Program for Writers at Warren

Wilson College.

The last member of the undergraduate Middlebury College faculty to receive

a Guggenheim Fellowship was Jay Parini in 1993.