Pitt's Fiona Cheong Receives Pennsylvania Council on the Arts 2007 Fellowship Award

PITTSBURGH-University of Pittsburgh School of Arts and Sciences' associate professor of English Fiona Cheong is one of 68 selected to receive the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts (PCA) 2007 Fellowship to further her artistic career. The honor includes a $10,000 grant, which was awarded on the basis of writing submitted from Cheong's unpublished manuscript, titled "Chinese."

Since its inception in 1966, PCA has worked to foster the excellence, diversity, and vitality of the arts in Pennsylvania. The council annually awards fellowships of

$5-$10,000. The goal of PCA is to encourage and enable outstanding Pennsylvania artists of all backgrounds to perform their work.

Cheong is the cofounder and co-mentor of the Asian American Writer's Forum, an organization of graduate and advanced undergraduate writers of color within the Pitt community. She teaches contemporary fiction, Asian American and transnational literature, creative writing pedagogies, and women's studies at Pitt. Cheong also teaches both graduate and undergraduate fiction workshops. She is a member of the Pitt's Writing Program Committee.

Cheong received the B.A. degree in English and the M.F.A in creative writing from Cornell University. She has published two novels, "The Scent of the Gods" (WW Norton, 1993) and Shadow Theatre (Soho Press, 2002). She also contributed to "Charlie Chan Is Dead: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Literature" (Penguin Books, 1993) and "Tilting the Continent: Southeast Asian American Writing" (New Rivers Press, 2000).

###

3/16/07/tmw