When Maaza Mengiste first got the call saying she won a MacArthur 'Genius Grant', she thought it was a joke. Or maybe an AI scam.
But it wasn't. The Ethiopian American author was awarded an $800,000 grant to be distributed over five years from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
She was one of 20 this year who were given the prestigious award for "extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits.""My voice was shaking and it was just a complete shock," Mengiste told USA TODAY. "I'm still completely overcome and overwhelmed by it. It really means a lot to be able to have this gift."
Mengiste never planned on becoming a writer. She took English classes in secret after dropping her pre-med track and wrote her first
short story when she was 33 and applying to graduate school.
Since graduating from NYU with a Master of Fine Arts, Mengiste has honed in on Ethiopian history: she learned Italian on a Fulbright scholarship to research the Italo-Ethiopian War and has authored two award-winning books about conflicts in twentieth-century Ethiopia.
The MacArthur Fellowship is one of few grants that is unrestricted, meaning recipients are not required to report back how and for what the money is used. According to the Foundation, the open-endedness is to provide "the maximum freedom for the recipients to follow their creative vision."
Among other projects, Mengiste hopes to use the grant to support initiatives that promote translations of African literary fiction to English. She aims to also continue working on a database of photo archives from the 1935 Italian-Ethiopian war.
"We live in an era that we're bombarded by images constantly," Mengiste said. "They're coming out of Gaza, they're coming out of Sudan, there are photographs from Ukraine. All of these different conflicts and yet it's hard to recognize sometimes that there is memory making happening in these images."
Beyond financial backing, the fellowship provides an endorsement of the recipient's work and ambitions. Mengiste said she will be able to think expansively with the funding.
Stanford chemistry professor Song Lin, who was also awarded the Genius Grant this year, said that the freedom the grant provides will allow his lab to break new frontiers of electrochemistry and organic chemistry.
"Fundamental research is always really important, but sometimes can be overlooked by the public," Song Lin said. "And that's because sometimes it takes years or decades for fundamental research to start to have an impact on society. So having this ability to pursue ideas without necessarily worrying about whether the idea is currently funded or not, whether it will start to have impact right now, is really important."
Song Lin's work focuses on developing electrochemical methods to build large, organic molecules. He hopes that this research will allow for more sustainable, efficient ways to synthesize drugs.
From chemists to writers to anthropologists, recipients of the 2026 MacArthur fellowships span disciplines, backgrounds and ages.
The youngest of the 2026 class is Immanuel Wilkins, a 29-year-old jazz saxophonist.Wilkins said he always dreamt of receiving the fellowship but never imagined it would come so early. For him, the congratulatory call came at the end of August on an Amtrak from New York to Philadelphia.
"The award is a really incredible stamp, but more importantly, I think it allows for me to create some extremely experimental and provocative work that also will have the benefit of the doubt because of the fact that I have this entity of the MacArthur Foundation who has kind of indoctrinated me, and I think that's the real reward of the award."
He hopes to use the grant to rent studio time, which he hasn't been able to afford to do for more than two consecutive days.
Wilkins told USA TODAY that his musical practice also encompasses various visual elements, including fabrication and sculptural work for which the grant will alleviate financial burdens for.
"This actively makes some of those dreams a little more possible, and there's something beautiful about the urgency and immediacy of creating work," Wilkins said. "There's something really special about having an idea and then making it the next day."
The MacArthur Foundation was established in 1970 following the death of investor and philanthropist John D. MacArthur, who left an estimated $1 billion to the foundation. The Fellows Program was officially initiated in 1981 and over 1,000 people have been named fellows since then. Some notable winners include Hamilton star Lin-Manuel Miranda, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Josh Ashberry and Fields Medal-winning mathematician Terrance Tao.
See the full list of 2026 MacArthur recipients here.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Genius grants: Who got this year's $800,000 MacArthur awards?
