Targeted News Service
December 16, 2009 Wednesday 3:13 AM EST
Professor, Author Honored with NEA Literature Fellowship
LEWISBURG, Pa.
Bucknell University issued the following news release:
By Kathryn Kopchik
Robert Rosenberg, assistant professor of English at Bucknell
University, has been awarded a 2010 Literature Fellowship from the
National Endowment for the Arts.
"This prestigious award of $25,000 was based on writing that Robert
submitted from his new novel," said John Rickard, professor of English
and department chair at Bucknell.
According to the NEA, "The 12 panelists convened by the NEA reviewed
25,000 manuscript pages from the 993 eligible applications submitted.
The 42 prose writers who were selected come from 17 states and the
District of Columbia."
Rosenberg, who joined the Bucknell faculty in 2005, teaches creative
writing (fiction), contemporary literature and travel literature. A
frequent book review contributor to the Miami Herald and The Moscow
Times, he is the author of the novel This Is Not Civilization
(Houghton Mifflin, 2004).
Award-winning novel
This Is Not Civilization was inspired by Rosenberg’s experiences
teaching as a Peace Corps volunteer in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan, on an
Apache reservation in Arizona, and in earthquake-shattered Istanbul.
Shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize in Literature,
it has received numerous awards, including the 2005 Maria Thomas
Fiction Award for Best Peace Corps Novel, A Publisher’s Weekly First
Fiction Selection, A TimeOut New York Emerging Voices Selection, and
was listed as one of Library Journal’s "Season’s Most Successful
Debuts."
This is Not Civilization was also named A BookSense Selection, a
BookSense Summer 2005 Paperback Reading Pick, A Borders Books Original
Voices Selection, A Miami Herald "Best Literary Offering of the
Season," and a Powells.com No. 1 Staff Pick of 2004.
Rosenberg is now at work on a novel set in contemporary Istanbul. The
novel explores the overlapping heritage of Jews and Armenians in the
city, and their attempts to negotiate, as minorities, an identity in
an overwhelmingly Muslim society. It centers on the death of a wealthy
young Sephardic Jew, who has challenged the state’s denial of the 1915
Armenian genocide. After he is killed in a suspicious boating
accident, his brother returns to the city to piece together the true
story of the death, whose public account he has never been able to
accept.