Arizona State associate professor earns $625K MacArthur ‘genius’ grant

PHOENIX — An associate professor at Arizona State University has been named one of 25 recipients of a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant,” it was announced Thursday.

Natalie Diaz, a poet who teaches in the English department, and the others will receive $625,000 apiece over five years as “an investment in a person’s originality, insight, and potential” the foundation said on its website.

Fellowship winners can spend the money, doled out quarterly, however they choose.

Diaz teaches in the creative writing Master of Fine Arts program.

The foundation said Diaz drew on “her experience as a Mojave American and Latina to challenge the mythological and cultural touchstones underlying American society.”

In a video, she said how she sees her art was formed on the Southern California reservation where she grew up, listening to stories and talking to elders.

“I really believe in the physical power of poetry, of language,” Diaz said.

The former basketball player said she was a linguist before she turned to poetry.

“What words, what phrases makes certain peoples invisible and certain peoples visible?”

Her first collection of poems, “When My Brother Was an Aztec,” was published in 2012.

The foundation has awarded the grants since 1981.

This year’s group included academics, activists, artists, scholars and scientists.

Previous grant winners from ASU were artist Lauren Redniss and cultural historian Josh Kun in 2016.

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