UI Playwrights Workshop graduate awarded MacArthur Fellowship

IOWA CITY - For a New York City playwright, $625,000 is kind of like striking gold.

Samuel Hunter, 33, a University of Iowa Playwrights Workshop alumnus who lives in New York City, said he was in disbelief when he got an out-of-the-blue phone call announcing that he won a $625,000 grant.

'As an artist, you have those moments where it's hard to play the bills,” Hunter said. 'Or you have a play you feel weird about and you think, ‘am I doing the right thing in my life? Should I keep going?' What this says is, I need to keep going, I have to keep going and I will always keep going.”

The MacArthur Fellows Program will distribute the grant to Hunter in increments over the next five years. The program invites professionals from various fields to nominate artists for the award. A confidential and anonymous committee then selects 20 to 30 winners each year.

'The first time I knew about it was when they called me on Sept. 2,” Hunter said. 'I had heard about the MacArthur Fellowship, but it was like, ‘wait there must be something else called the MacArthur Fellowship because surely it cant be that.' ”

Hunter graduated with a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Iowa Playwrights Workshop in 2007.

'I really felt like the three years I spent in Iowa were the three years I spent figuring out my voice and I took that voice back to New York,” he said. ' ... It was almost like a three-year writing retreat.”

Many of his plays portray contemporary characters and situations. One of Hunter's plays, 'A Bright New Boise,” takes place in a Hobby Lobby break room and another play, 'The Whale,” features the life of a 600-pound man who lives entirely inside his apartment.

'I think people identify with the characters in terms of their loneliness and their wanting more from life,” said Art Borreca, co-head of the UI Playwrights Workshop.

Borreca said unlike other awards chosen from the merit of one particular body of work, the MacArthur Fellowship is based on the artist's profession as a whole.

'It's not only recognizing the distinction in your work so far, but it's also an investment in your future work,” he said.