Macquarie University Research Fellow, Dr Ann Vickery has received a Fulbright Postdoctoral Award to pursue research at Yale University in the US. Out of nineteen Australians to receive Fulbright awards in 2001, Vickery was the only one selected for a postdoctoral award.

Vickery will use her award to launch the first full-scale investigation into the unpublished work of poet Barbara Guest, of the New York School, during her 12 months at Yale.

The Fulbright awards were presented last month by US Ambassador Edward Gnehm at a National Award Dinner in Canberra. The awards are given out annually as part of the Fulbright program, established more than 50 years ago, to promote mutual understanding through cultural exchange between the USA and 140 other participating countries.

“I didn't expect to get the award but I was really excited by the prospect,” says Vickery, a Research Fellow in Macquarie's Department of Critical and Cultural Studies. Her book Leaving Lines of Gender: A Feminist Genealogy of Language Writing was published by Wesleyan University Press last year.

“Guest was influenced by the New York School of Art and had many collaborations with artists but criticism has mainly focused only on male poets who collaborated with artists,” Vickery points out. Guest, who got very little attention, influenced well known American poets like Frank O'Hara and John Ashbery who got all the recognition, according to Vickery.

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