V. Penelope Pelizzon, a PhD Alumni from the University of Missouri, has been recognized as one of 223 scholars to earn the Guggenhein Fellowship in 2026-27. Celebrating its 101st class, the Guggenhein Foundation is an organization that has awarded nearly $450 million in fellowships since 1925, supporting academics in the arts, humanities, and sciences.
Pelizzon, the author of three books of poetry, and coauthor of a critical book of film, has recently been in the poetic limelight with her most recent poetry collection, A Gaze Hound That Hunteth by the Eye (2024). Written over the course of a decade, while Pelizzon lived in vastly different cultures as the “trailing spouse” of a U.S diplomat, the collection explores and is in conversation with the environment, people, and contexts she finds herself in. The collection was up for consideration for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Pelizzon plans to use the year she has with the Guggenheim Fellowship to work on her fourth collection of poetry, which has the working title “The Wow.”
Pelizzon is currently an English professor at UConn in Mansfield, Conneticut.