"The Bennett Fellowship at 40: Table Talk with Charles Pratt and Elias Kulukundis" from The Exeter Bulletin

Charles Pratt '52 (left) and Elias Kulukundis '55

Forty years ago, the first manuscripts arrived in plain manila envelopes. They came from aspiring novelists and poets and playwrights eager to spend a year at Phillips Exeter. Applications for the Bennett Fellowship have arrived each December since (the total number of applications is around 200 annually), and former fellows have gone on to publish more than 70 books between them. What the fellowship offers is as significant in 2008 as it was in 1968, when the first Bennett Fellow came to campus: the gift of time and the permission to focus on nothing but the work of writing.

In the 40 years since the founding of the Bennett Fellowship, Charles W.Pratt ’52; P’83, P’84 has participated in choosing all but four of the fellows (he missed those four due to sabbaticals and teaching abroad). He served as a member of the selection committee in the first years and in 1971 became chair of the committee, a position he has held ever since. When a finalist is notified with a phone call from New Hampshire—a call many fellows say changed their lives—Charlie Pratt is the one to deliver the news. When the writer-in-residence arrives at PEA, Pratt is the one to greet the new fellow. For many years, Pratt would receive some 500 inquiries about the Bennett Fellowship every year, and respond to them all. (Nowadays, applicants can go directly to the Academy website and download an application.) He lugs home boxes full of applications, and over the years has read thousands of pages.

This spring, after quietly administering the program for so long, Pratt announced that he is retiring from chairing the Bennett Fellowship Committee. In June, together with Elias Kulukundis ’55, founder of the fellowship, he sat down to talk about what the program has meant to the Academy. Read more...

Read the full article in The Exeter Bulletin, Summer 2008...

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