Manuel Muñoz, MFA ’98, is an acclaimed fiction writer and a professor of creative writing at the University of Arizona—and he recently won one of the nation’s most coveted honors, an $800,000 “genius grant” from the John T. and Catherine D. MacArthur Foundation.
But in his prose, Muñoz draws on roots a world away from academia: he grew up in a Mexican-American family of farm workers in California’s Central Valley, laboring in the fields while also going to school.
“I am very careful when I tell my story, especially when I speak with students, to affirm that it isn’t about ‘bootstraps,’ but access,” notes Muñoz, who attended Harvard on scholarship as a first-generation student before matriculating into Cornell’s highly selective MFA program in creative writing.
“Many, many young people have creative drives, ambitions, and dreams, but we don’t all get access. Nothing is improbable if we are actually given equitable opportunities.”
Ryan Young/Cornell University
Semiconductors are at the core of the economy and national security. Their importance makes them a target. Sarah Kreps, director of the Tech Policy Institute in the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy, discusses how Cornell is helping to keep the semiconductor supply chain safe.
A party in the Temple of Zeus for retiring Zeus manager, Lydia Dutton. Left to right: A.R. Ammons, Cecil Giscombe, Dutton, David Burak, Phyllis Janowitz, James McConkey and Tony Caputi.
