Oakland Novelist Tommy Orange Is a 2025 MacArthur Fellow

Oakland writer Tommy Orange is one of 22 people selected this year to receive a MacArthur Fellowship — an $800,000 no-strings-attached cash prize paid out over the course of five years.

Known colloquially as the “genius awards,” the fellowships are given to celebrate, and help fund the creative pursuits of, outstanding individuals working in any field.

Born and raised in Oakland, where much of his work is set, Orange is best known for his two novels, 2018’s There There  and 2024’s Wandering Stars, both of which weave together large casts of Native characters who grapple with both historical, intergenerational trauma as well as urban, contemporary struggles like opioid addiction. KQED’s review of Wandering Stars praised the novel for its moral clarity and the way it shows how “how atrocities — historical and present-day — can scar an entire lineage.”

“Through sweeping storytelling married to an intimate focus on interiority,” the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation wrote in its announcement of the award, “Orange illuminates the richness and depth of contemporary Native American life.”

Other 2025 fellowship recipients with Bay Area connections include Central Valley photographer Matt Black, UC Berkeley neurobiologist Teresa Puthussery and Stanford chemical engineer William Tarpeh.

Meanwhile, Orange is part of a long line of Bay Area writers who have been honored by the MacArthur Foundation over the years — author and disability activist Alice Wong (2024), San Jose–raised novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen (2017), graphic novelist Gene Luen Yang (2016), and more.