Marshall named Cullman Fellow after Pulitzer win

Associate Professor Megan Marshall was named a Cullman Center Fellow on April 22—just days after winning a Pulitzer Prize for her biography of 19th-century journalist and women’s rights activist Margaret Fuller.

Associate Professor Megan Marshall, who won the Pulitzer Prize this month, has also been named a Cullman Center Fellow by the New York Public Library.

The fellowships of Marshall and 14 other scholars will be held at the New York Public Library’s Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers for the 2014–2015 academic year.

“I am tremendously proud to welcome the Cullman Center’s new class of Fellows,” said Tony Marx, president of the New York Public Library. “The Cullman Center offers these talented individuals access to our world-renowned collections within an environment that inspires and supports their exciting work.”

The Fellows will be in residence at the Cullman Center from September 2014 through May 2015. Each Fellow receives a stipend, private office in the center’s quarters in the library’s landmark Stephen A. Schwarzman Building at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, and full access to the incomparable research collections and online resources there.

Marshall, who is one of two nonfiction writer Fellows, will work on a project about Nathaniel Hawthorne’s sister, Elizabeth.

“I am very grateful for this opportunity,” Marshall said, “which allows me to grow as a scholar and a writer, and gives me tools I can bring back into the classroom.

“I am also extremely thankful for the recent support of my colleagues and students at Emerson, who inspire me every day with their own creative energy and high standards of accomplishment,” she said. 

On April 14, it was announced that Marshall won a Pulitzer Prize—the first awarded to an Emerson faculty member while still teaching at the College—for her book Margaret Fuller: A New American Life (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). Marshall, who is on leave as she works on forthcoming biographies, teaches in the Writing, Literature and Publishing Department.

Emerson President Lee Pelton and WLP colleagues honored Marshall during a reception on April 22.