Award-winning novelist Tommy Orange made headlines Wednesday when he won a MacArthur Fellowship — often referred to as a “genius grant.” But it turns out the Oakland writer had been keeping the intel quiet for about a month already after Chris Lovely, senior program officer at the MacArthur Foundation, pranked him when delivering the good news.

She’d set up a call asking for his input on another person she said was a fellowship candidate. Then, when he got on the call, she flipped the script and told him he’d been selected.

“It was all kind of a blur,” he said in an interview.

The win is a high-profile acknowledgment of the significance of Orange’s work, which spotlights stories of urban Indigenous people who are rarely represented in popular culture. He is the author of the award-winni

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