Local Writer Wins Guggenheim Fellowship

These are good times for D.C. writer Matt Klam! Besides writing the cover story on Robert Downey Jr. in the most recent GQ, and being featured in the Washington City Paper (BIG DEAL!) for his involvement in a local writing center, Matt has just won a good chunk of change. In early April, the Guggenheim Foundation awarded him a grant for his work as a fiction writer. The website does not specify the amount of his grant, but it does say that the average grant is $43,200. Besides Klam, six other fiction writers are claiming a prize: Dean Bakopoulos, Lan Samantha Chang, Tony D'Souza, Sam Lipsyte, Vyvyane Loh, Thad Ziolkowski. Klam is best known for his short fiction stories, which have frequently appeared in the New Yorker magazine and were collected in his book Sam the Cat: and Other Stories.