Manley awarded prestigious NEA writing fellowship

Frank Manley, Charles Howard Candler Professor of Renaissance Literature, has been awarded a 1995 National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) writing fellowship. The NEA Literature Program's Creative Writing Fellowship in Fiction and Creative Nonfiction enables writers of exceptional talent to set aside time to write, research, travel and to advance their artistry. Among a faculty of four creative writing professors at Emory, two of them were awarded fellowships offered nationally to only 33 writers of fiction.

According to the NEA, the literature program received 1,366 applications from writers in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and Americans living abroad. Forty-two fellowships were awarded at $20,000 each, a funding rate of 2.9 percent. Another Emory faculty member, visiting assistant professor Geoff Becker, also received the NEA fellowship in fiction. Becker recently was awarded the Drue Heinz Literature Prize for his collection of short stories, Dangerous Men.

Manley, an acclaimed playwright, poet and short story writer, is director of Emory's creative writing program. He is the author of "Two Masters: A Play in Two Parts," the co-winner of the Great American New Play Contest at The Actor's Theatre in Louisville, Ky., in 1985. The production earned the praises of the late TIME magazine theater critic William A. Henry III and New York Times critic Mel Gussow.

Manley's critically acclaimed drama, "The Evidence," premiered at Theater Emory during the 1990-91 season and was produced in fall 1991 in New York City. "The Evidence" also won second place in the 1992-93 Clauder Playwriting Competition. Another Emory premiere, "The Trap" (1992), Manley's critically acclaimed drama about a case of sexual harassment on a college campus, was later produced at Atlanta's Alliance Theatre (1993). Seen by playwright/actor Steve Martin and TIME's Henry, Manley's "The Trap" earned the praise of both.

Serving as Theater Emory's resident playwright, Manley will premiere another new work on the campus next season. "Married Life," presented this year as a staged reading, will be seen in a full production during Theater Emory's 1995-96 season.

Manley's collection of short stories, Within the Ribbons: 9 Stories, was published by North Point Press in 1989. His first collection of poetry, Resultances, won the Devins Award in 1980 and Some Poems and Some Talk About Poetry (University Press of Mississippi, Jackson) was published in 1985.

-- Joyce Bell

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