A 2006 MacArthur Fellowship has been awarded to a former OSI fellow, writer Adrian Nicole LeBlanc. LeBlanc received a 2000 Soros Justice Fellowship to write Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble and Coming of Age in the Bronx (2003, Scribner). The book details the daily chaos and brutal violence of a community in an impoverished Bronx neighborhood, revealing its inner workings and creating an intimate chronicle of urban poverty. 

The MacArthur Fellows Program awards unrestricted fellowships to talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction. There are three criteria for selection of Fellows: exceptional creativity, promise for important future advances based on a track record of significant accomplishment, and potential for the fellowship to facilitate subsequent creative work.

For more on LeBlanc and her work, see the MacArthur Foundation website at www.macfound.org.