UC English professor named 2026 Guggenheim Fellow

Kristen Iversen, an English professor in the University of Cincinnati College of Arts and Sciences, has been named a 2026 Guggenheim Fellow, one of the nation’s most prestigious honors for scholars, writers and artists.

The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation selected Iversen as part of its 101st class of fellows, announced April 14. The foundation recognized her in the biography category for both her past achievements and the promise of future work.

“At this point in my career, the Guggenheim Fellowship feels like a pinnacle — a profound honor and a high point in a life devoted to writing,” Iversen said.

Iversen joins 222 other fellows chosen through a competitive process from nearly 5,000 applicants. The fellowship provides funding to support independent creative and scholarly work.

“To receive this recognition is deeply meaningful: it honors the work I have already published, but it also strengthens my commitment to the work still ahead.”

Iversen is the author of the acclaimed memoir “Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats.“ She plans to use the fellowship to continue work on her book “The Poet of Science: Nikola Tesla in the Gilded Age,“ a project more than a decade in the making.

“For more than 10 years, I have been deeply engaged with Tesla’s life and work, following him across the world to the places where he lived, studied, kept laboratories, developed his most important inventions, and wrote — not only scientific articles, but poetry, philosophical essays and even op-eds.”

Her work draws on extensive archival research and aims to present a fuller portrait of the inventor.

“I hope readers will come away from my book with a fuller understanding of Nikola Tesla: not only of his extraordinary inventions, but of the man himself—how he lived, what he valued, and what he devoted his life to imagining and creating.”

Iversen said Tesla’s life and ideas remain especially relevant today.

“He believed that electricity—and the forms of communication and connection it would make possible—could help lead humanity toward greater international understanding.”

The Guggenheim Foundation has awarded fellowships to more than 19,000 individuals since 1925, including many of the most influential figures in the arts, sciences and humanities.