I’m very honored to be a member of The American Academy of Arts and Letters. It’s like the Basketball Hall of Fame for American writers. I was inducted in 2015.
The American Academy of Arts and Letters was founded in 1898 as an honor society of the country’s leading architects, artists, composers, and writers. Early members include William Merritt Chase, Childe Hassam, Julia Ward Howe, Henry James, Edward MacDowell, Theodore Roosevelt, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, John Singer Sargent, Mark Twain, and Edith Wharton. The Academy’s 300 members are elected for life and pay no dues.
Current members include, among others, Lorrie Moore, Colson Whitehead, Don Delillo, Paul Muldoon, Terry Tempest Williams, Jeffrey Eugenides, Jonathan Franzen, Henry Louise Gates, Jr., Rita Dove, Junot Diaz, Joy Williams, George Saunders, Leslie Marmon Silko. Charles Simic, Jane Smiley, Joy Harjo, Francine Prose, Jayne Anne Phillips, Louise Erdrich, and Marilynne Robinson.
