Professor Marcus Awarded Residency Fellowship

By Alex Kabat '24, April 15, 2024
Professor Marcus received a Saltonstall Residency Fellowship for her upcoming memoir.

Joan Marcus, assistant professor in the Department of Writing specializing in Nonfiction, Fiction, and Children's Literature, has been awarded a residency Fellowship. This year, the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts is offering the opportunity to 35 writers, poets, photographers, filmmakers, and visual artists from across New York State.

Each residency session includes one poet, one fiction or creative nonfiction writer, one photographer or filmmaker, and two visual artists. Saltonstall’s mission is to provide a space “designed for those looking for a quiet, supportive environment in which to focus on their craft.”

Professor Marcus’s stories and essays have appeared in The Sun, Fourth Genre, Laurel Review, The Smart Set, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Georgia Review, Superstition Review, and elsewhere.

Avoidant Type, her memoir-in-progress, tells the story of her decades-long struggle with medical anxiety. Part personal narrative, part cultural analysis, Avoidant Type chronicles her experience of embodied anxiety at a time when many Americans mistrust western medicine and embrace alternative treatments, even risky or unproven ones.

During her residency at the Saltonstall Foundation, she will be working on the final section of this memoir.

Congratulations to Professor Marcus!