Tommy Orange Named a 2025 MacArthur Fellow 

Tommy Orange (Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma) MFA ’16 has been named a 2025 MacArthur Foundation Fellow. Recipients are recognized for their exceptional creativity and demonstrated excellence in their discipline. The foundation bestows fellows with a generous, unrestricted $800,000 stipend commonly referred to as a “genius grant.”

Orange is an award-winning fiction writer whose work is known for capturing the rich complexity of urban Native American lives. He is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma and was born and raised in Oakland, California. In 2016, Orange graduated from Institute of American Indian Arts with an MFA in Creative Writing, and soon after, he completed his first novel, There There (2018). There There received the 2019 PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel, the John Leonard Prize from the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was recognized as one of the 10 Best Books of 2018 by The New York Times. Orange’s second novel, Wandering Stars (2024), received the 2025 Aspen Words Literary Prize and was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2024. Orange is currently a faculty mentor in the IAIA MFA in Creative Writing program.

“On behalf of the IAIA community, I extend our warmest congratulations to Tommy Orange on this extraordinary recognition. His storytelling expands how the world understands contemporary Indigenous life and honors the strength and brilliance of our communities. As an alum and a faculty mentor in our MFA in Creative Writing program, he models the craft, discipline, and generosity we hope to instill in every student. We are immensely proud of him and grateful for the ways his work continues to inspire new generations of Indigenous writers,” said IAIA President Dr. Shelly C. Lowe (Navajo).

Watch a video of Tommy Orange produced by the MacArthur Foundation.