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.”
Serge Petchenyi/Cornell University
From left, Xi Yang, PhD '10, senior lecturer of finance in the SC Johnson College of Business; Christine Ye; Christine Ye Award recipient Margaret E. Foster, doctoral candidate in communication; Cornelia Ye Award recipient Naman Agrawal, doctoral candidate in neurobiology and behavior; Cornelia Ye; and Derina Samuel, associate director of graduate student development at the Center for Teaching Innovation.
NASA, ESA, CSA, Ralf Crawford (STScI)
Artist concept of the gas giant planet WD 1856 b orbiting a white dwarf star. The planet is 7 times larger than the Earth-sized white dwarf it orbits. WD 1856 b has methane and hazes in its atmosphere, which would give it a similar color to Saturn's moon Titan. The white dwarf formed from a star that died 5 billion years ago, and has been cooling ever since, giving it an orange colour similar to the Sun.
