(from l.) Photographer and social justice artist Tonika Lewis Johnson; fiction writer Tommy Orange; composer, lyricist, playwright, and vocalist Heather Christian; and epidemiologist Nabarun Dasgupta. (Photos courtesy of the MacArthur Foundation)
Now that it’s finally fall, awards season is in full swing. Amid announcements for the National Book Awards, the Nobel Prizes, and the Booker Prize, among others, the MacArthur Foundation has also revealed its 2025 fellows. This year’s class encompasses 22 recipients of what is popularly known as the “genius grant,” representing disciplines ranging from political science, evolutionary biology, and cartography, to prose fiction, archeology, and film.
The MacArthur Fellowship is one of the world’s most prestigious cash awards, offering each recipient a no-strings attached grant of $800,000. Notably, fellows don’t apply for the honor; rather, they’re nominated anonymously and subsequently vetted by the Foundation. The process, according to Marlies Carruth, the director of the MacArthur Fellows Program, is one that can take “many months and sometimes years.”
“The 2025 MacArthur fellows expand the boundaries of knowledge, artistry, and human understanding,” Kristen Mack, VP of communications, MacArthur fellows, and partnerships, said in a statement. “With virtuosity, persistence, and courage, they chart new paths toward collaborative, creative, and flourishing futures.”
Among this year’s recipients is Garrett Bradley, a New Orleans-based artist and filmmaker whose documentary, Time, was nominated for an Oscar in 2021. Jeremy Frey, on the other hand, descends from a long line of Wabanaki basket makers, incorporating all-natural materials that he himself harvests in his practice. Tommy Orange, whose novels There There and Wandering Stars center around the Native American experience, is the only fiction writer selected for this year’s fellowship cohort. Gala Porras-Kim also mines history and its many dimensions throughout her interdisciplinary work, which revolves around the cultural artifacts held in museums.
Art, culture, and literature aren’t the only fields recognized by the MacArthur Foundation. Fellows also include Nabarun Dasgupta, an epidemiologist who focuses on reducing the harms and deaths from drug use, an interest that he developed about two decades ago when a close friend died of a heroin overdose. Harvard mathematician Lauren K. Williams is “expanding fundamental mathematical theory,” per the Foundation, while astrophysicist Kareem El-Badry researches everything from “overlooked dormant black holes to new classes of stars and coupled systems.”
“At the heart of the MacArthur fellows program is its aim to identify extraordinarily creative individuals with a track record of excellence in a field of scholarship or area of practice,” the Foundation writes of the fellowship. “In keeping with this purpose, the Foundation awards fellowships directly to individuals rather than through institutions.”
To learn more about this year’s class of MacArthur fellows, visit the MacArthur Foundation website.
The MacArthur Foundation has awarded “genius grants” of $800,000 to 22 fellows, including a political scientist, astrophysicist, cartographer, fiction writer, and filmmaker.
Political scientist Hahrie Han (l.) and artist Jeremy Frey. (Photos courtesy of the MacArthur Foundation)
Neurobiologist Teresa Puthussery (l.) and astrophysicist Kareem El-Badry. (Photos courtesy of the MacArthur Foundation)
Cartographer Margaret Wickens Pearce (l.) and artist and filmmaker Garrett Bradley. (Photos courtesy of the MacArthur Foundation)
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All images via the MacArthur Foundation press room.
Sources: 2025 MacArthur Fellows; Thinkers, dreamers, doers: Here's who made the 2025 MacArthur Fellow list; MacArthur Foundation Announces 2025 ‘Genius Grant’ Winners
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