Don Mee Choi
Award-winning poet and translator Don Mee Choi received a coveted MacArthur Foundation Fellow “Genius Grant.”
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced the recipients of this year’s prestigious fellowships on Sept. 28. The foundation awards fellowships to people who have shown exceptional originality and dedication to their creative pursuits.
“This doesn’t feel real to me,” said Choi, who teaches at Renton Technical College. “I’m grateful and very fortunate to have this tremendous support that will enable me to keep doing my creative work.”
Choi will receive an unconditional scholarship of $625,000 paid over five years.
In her three volumes of poetry and numerous essays, she explores themes of dislocation, fractured identities, trauma, and memory, while amplifying civilian voices that have been obscured by the history and looming threat of war in her homeland, South Korea.