Earlier this morning the Chicago based MacArthur Foundation released a list of its 2009 fellowship recipients including author and legal scholar Elyn Saks. Saks is best known for her work in mental health policy advocacy, addressing legal issues related to those suffering from severe mental illness including involuntary commitment, competency to be executed, proxy consent, and the right to refuse treatment. She has published many books on these issues including Refusing Care: Forced Treatment and the Rights of the Mentally Ill—an insightful exploration of when, if ever, the mentally ill should be treated against their will—and, more recently, a memoir of her own battle with schizophrenia in The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness.
The MacArthur Fellowships, also known as “genius grants,” provide each recipient with $500,000 over five years to facilitate subsequent creative work. We are proud to have supported Saks in her past endeavors and look forward to her future contributions to the field of mental health advocacy as a MacArthur Foundation Fellow.
And as we congratulate her, we add her name to the growing list of Press authors who have received a MacArthur fellowship, including 2008 fellowship recipient and author of Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine: An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice, Nancy G. Siraisi; Stuart Dybek, author of Childhood and Other Neighborhoods and a 2007 MacArthur Fellow; George Lewis, a 2002 fellow whose book A Power Stronger Than Itself we published in 2008; Dave Hickey, renown art critic and author of The Invisible Dragon: Essays on Beauty, Revised and Expanded; Danielle Allen, author of Talking to Strangers; and David Shulman, author of several UCP titles including his latest, Spring, Heat, Rains.